Waters/Gilmour/ Reunion Comfortably Friday 13th May (Video)

David Gilmour and Nick Mason joined Roger Waters on stage at the O2 Arena last night during one of the London stops on Waters' Wall tour. Here is an audience video of the performance of Comfortably Numb.

[youtube]QbGoOtYnevA[/youtube]

A heartfelt wow! That must have been quite the treat for the audience. Too bad the band couldn't get get together entirely with the passing of Richard Wright a couple of years ago. But I loved to have been there.

- Jos

Like a great wine, Gilmour gets better with age....Thanks for this - i had heard it was going to happen - but nice to see it as well.

Waters filmed the all of the performances of The Wall in London and is going to release something on DVD. It will include Gilmour's performance.

Ah Gilmour, one of the few guitarists outside of metal who can get away with using EMGs without sounding like ass. The transparency is likely quite imperative given his signal chain (I mean you could anchor a battleship with that thing). No surprise that he comes out playing excellent.


These entire shows with only Waters infront of that wall thing typically? That is odd.

Gilmour is one tasteful player - which is perhaps the most important technique of all. All the more amazing when you realise that about 90% of what he does - centres around little more than a pentatonic / blues scale.

don't over-complicate it.......

Gilmour is one tasteful player - which is perhaps the most important technique of all. All the more amazing when you realise that about 90% of what he does - centres around little more than a pentatonic / blues scale.

don't over-complicate it.......

I would say it is more amazing that he uses a pentatonic/blues scale near exclusively and don't manage to be boring. Many guitarists get stuck on those scales and are too predictable, too boring. The biggest issue with pentatonic scales is you retain the leading tones, but dispense with a lot of the flavour. Take a lydian mode for example, the sharp 4th gives a very distinct mood. You need to know how to use them and understand them to make it work, many of these old guys don't know much theory at all, they tend to gravitate around things like pentatonics as you can practically rule out a 'wrong' note, it isn't really part of the scale. The disadvantage is it is more difficult to build tension and resolution as such. If you asked Danny Gatton why his solos sound so interesting he would have told you "I play them all in the wrong keys", he was playing modally, he didn't really understand it however.

Gilmour is one tasteful player - which is perhaps the most important technique of all. All the more amazing when you realise that about 90% of what he does - centres around little more than a pentatonic / blues scale.

don't over-complicate it.......

I would say it is more amazing that he uses a pentatonic/blues scale near exclusively and don't manage to be boring. Many guitarists get stuck on those scales and are too predictable, too boring. The biggest issue with pentatonic scales is you retain the leading tones, but dispense with a lot of the flavour. Take a lydian mode for example, the sharp 4th gives a very distinct mood. You need to know how to use them and understand them to make it work, many of these old guys don't know much theory at all, they tend to gravitate around things like pentatonics as you can practically rule out a 'wrong' note, it isn't really part of the scale. The disadvantage is it is more difficult to build tension and resolution as such. If you asked Danny Gatton why his solos sound so interesting he would have told you "I play them all in the wrong keys", he was playing modally, he didn't really understand it however.

I think the reason Gilmour is so good is his ear for melody and the unique nuances in his playing style. He performs with his heart. Listening to his brief appearances on The Final Cut, he does so much with very little and manages to cry through his guitar. He has a very good ear for tone and has reached for a refined sound. He also has great range with his voice when it is not stressed from touring. After a career where he handled vocals on long tours, his voice is still capable of holding that range sung full voice and softly, (he has not recorded recently but I am mainly speaking of the elderly Gilmour post Floyd's last tour). Many musicians at his age and with similar career experience are now almost completely deaf, if still alive.

As for the Waters/The Wall performance, he is not flawless but in his defense he is out of practice for this one-off.






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Last edited by Michael-GnL-Michael on Sun Jun 12, 2011 1:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Very cool. I wasn't much of a Pink Floyd fan in my youth (80s), but came to enjoy them as an adult. And while I enjoy all their major hits, I'm more of a Gilmour fan than a Waters fan, so I didn't really miss him when he was gone!

All the theory and technique in the world won't save someone from being a boring player, which is why I listen to so much blues. No matter what the musical "limitations," I find this genre much more compelling than most of the more "complex" genres. And despite all the prog trappings, Floyd is essentially a blues band.

I think the reason Gilmour is so good is his ear for melody and the unique nuances in his playing style. He performs with his heart. Listening to his brief appearances on The Final Cut, he does so much with very little and manages to cry through his guitar. He has a very good ear for tone and has reached for a refined sound. He also has great range with his voice when it is not stressed from touring. After a career where he handled vocals on long tours, his voice is still capable of holding that range sung full voice and softly, (he has not recorded recently but I am mainly speaking of the elderly Gilmour post Floyd's last tour). Many musicians at his age and with similar career experience are now almost completely deaf, if still alive.

As for the Waters/The Wall performance, he is not flawless but in his defense he is out of practice for this one-off.
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True, but he also plays the solo differently when playing with the Waters version of Floyd than solo or with the post-Waters Pink Floyd. His phrasing is different and so is his tone. It's pretty certain that he wasn't using his personal rig for this performance.

I think the reason Gilmour is so good is his ear for melody and the unique nuances in his playing style. He performs with his heart. Listening to his brief appearances on The Final Cut, he does so much with very little and manages to cry through his guitar. He has a very good ear for tone and has reached for a refined sound. He also has great range with his voice when it is not stressed from touring. After a career where he handled vocals on long tours, his voice is still capable of holding that range sung full voice and softly, (he has not recorded recently but I am mainly speaking of the elderly Gilmour post Floyd's last tour). Many musicians at his age and with similar career experience are now almost completely deaf, if still alive.

As for the Waters/The Wall performance, he is not flawless but in his defense he is out of practice for this one-off.
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True, but he also plays the solo differently when playing with the Waters version of Floyd than solo or with the post-Waters Pink Floyd. His phrasing is different and so is his tone. It's pretty certain that he wasn't using his personal rig for this performance.

The linked Youtube video is not a good representation of whatever tone Gilmour had for the performance.

Gilmour has probably played the Comfortably Numb solo different in varying degrees every time he has performed the song. Of course he had to follow a format to a certain degree or the song would not be the song. His phrasing deviated quite a bit more from night to night during his On An Island Tour.

If you listen to some of the DSOTM, WYWH and Animals live bootlegs it is surprising how fresh he sounded while doing lengthy tours. His phrasing during the On An Island Tour appeared sloppy at times. I have wondered if he was just trying to do the leads differently after performing them hundreds and hundreds of times.......different for the sake of different at times. Several songs have been performed more than 5 times on official releases.

The two post-Waters Floyd tours sounded very structured and restricting. The Knebworth (EDIT: to correct from Live Aid) performance was the least inspiring. Live 8 wasn't impressive beyond the reunion aspect especially with Waters coming off his tour with a tired voice. Yet while the band may have seemed like an uninspired machine at times on the official live recordings, Gilmour was often coming up with very fresh solos on nights when they were not recording live, evidenced on some bootlegs.

The Waters stage setup has never showcased the guitars the way Floyd did with Gilmour. The tone his guitarists have is just awful IMO. In the Waters band, there are just guitarists in the mix but in Pink Floyd Gilmour's sound and performances were as central as the light shows. Doing Pink Floyd music thus demands that the guitar have a certain presence. That is my opinion and apparently not shared by Waters.

There is a live recording of Gilmour performing blues with BB King floating around the web. Gilmour has all of the quality characteristics in his sound including running his guitar in stereo. We will have to wait for the DVD release of this Wall performance to see if he had his personal rig.

It is also worth noting that his tone varies from venue to venue.



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EDIT: to make correction replacing Live Aid with Knebworth.

Last edited by Michael-GnL-Michael on Tue Jun 14, 2011 5:18 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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I was thinking about this today. There are 12 different live versions of Gilmour performing Comfortably Numb on official releases. The Waters performance would be the 13th if another is not released before it.


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From the official Pink Floyd website, HERE is a video approved by Waters with multiple camera angles and better sound.

Gilmour does have his personal rig.