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covering Pink Floyd with a one-guitarist band


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How can you pull it off? How does Gilmour pull it off? A lot of their stuff has two guitars on the recordings Do they use a backing track?

 

I've seen Pink Floyd in concert on video, but never in person. The only good cover bands I have seen do Floyd use two guitars. One that stands out in my mind is Young Lust- that one note side riff that repeats all the time... how could you do that song with one guitar?

 

Lots of them are like that, with a very key rhythm guitar and very necessary lead fills over top.

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Well if you have a keyboard player, that obviously helps. :D My band is a 3 piece and we play a lot of covers that normally have 2 guitars. It just requires changing the arrangement a bit.

 

If you have something like a riff that keeps repeating, you might try getting a looping device for your guitar rig. I have an Echoplex and that really allows me to fill out the sound. You can play a riff, loop it and then play over the loop. I don't do much of that myself but I do like using long delays sometimes with the Echoplex just to get a fuller sound.

 

In general though, we just take the one-guitar thing as a challenge to get creative. Lots of bands have different arrangments for their own songs when playing them live as opposed to the recordings... no reason you can't. There are plenty of Floyd songs that could be pulled off with one guitar, especially if there are keys.

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One of my projects is a Pink Floyd Tribute. As the only guitarist, I found it was the frequent use of acoustic guitars that caused the biggest difficulties for me. Generally it is pretty easy to decide which guitar part is the most important, and disregard the rest.

 

My solution was to put graphtech ghost saddles on my guitars. They have piezo tranducers built into the saddles, and you can get a pretty realistic 'electric-acoustic' sound out of them. A three way toggle lets you choos between electric, acousti or both.

 

Here is a live recording of 'Hey You' made with one guitar.

 

http://www.savefile.com/filehost/files.php?fid=6773907

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there's a band that play at my work regularly and it's basically 2 guys. guitar, bass and both of them sing.

 

they use drum tracks and for some stuff, minor backing tracks but they do another brick with just the drums and not only does the guitarist carry the tune, he does the solo and an improvised shreddy extension with his {censored}ing teeth note perfect.

 

:eek:

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Floyd uses a LOT of backup musicians live - and I know that they've done this since at least The Wall tour. They had an extra guitarist, an extra keyboardist, an extra bassist (for when Roger would sing some dramatic theatrical part and couldnt play bass at the same time) and even a second drummer who beefed up Nick Mason's sound. Not to mention the four backup singers...

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Originally posted by KHAN

One of my projects is a Pink Floyd Tribute. As the only guitarist, I found it was the frequent use of acoustic guitars that caused the biggest difficulties for me. Generally it is pretty easy to decide which guitar part is the most important, and disregard the rest.


My solution was to put graphtech ghost saddles on my guitars. They have piezo tranducers built into the saddles, and you can get a pretty realistic 'electric-acoustic' sound out of them. A three way toggle lets you choos between electric, acousti or both.


Here is a live recording of 'Hey You' made with one guitar.


http://www.savefile.com/filehost/files.php?fid=6773907

 

In my trio, we tend to re-arrange the tunes to suit our inclinations...for instance on "Wish You Were Here", I do the 12-string part of the intro, and Wendy (or Richard, when Wendy can't make the gig) plays the intro lead line on the fret-less bass, then I play the solo on my 12-string...We do something kinda similar when we play "Free Bird", too, where the fret-less bass takes the slide guitar "signature".

 

On "Time" we do a fairly straight forward version, except for on the lead part I'll stomp on an overdrive to make my Guild jumbo sound like a Les Paul. Same when we play "Hey You", "Young Lust", stuff like that.

 

The way I see it is I'll be damned if I'm gonna play all the lead work...Bassists got fingers, too!;)

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What Terry said...

 

"In my trio, we tend to re-arrange the tunes to suit our inclinations"

 

I'm doing a solo acoustic version of "Us and Them"...and segueing it into Alan Parsons' "Time"

 

The only problem I see would be if you're doing like what Khan is, a tribute band where you really want to have everything as close to the original as possible. But, if you're just adding a couple Floyd tunes to the regular set, it shouldn't be a problem.

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Wow, what a great thread! I am the keys player in a band that does a Pink Floyd tribute set from the Wall with one guitar player. I do some fills for the rythym on some songs and others we just have to pick what to leave out that will still maintain the feeling of the song. We are just a bar band but try to make a mini production with lights, lasers and homemade animation in the back ground. For a taste check out the video on the top of the photos page on our website: www.lastband.com The video is not that great and is editted to reduce bandwidth, but you'll get the idea.

 

We are adding a sax and some backup singers soon to expand and add even more 'flair' to the show. Also the bass player will play the acoustic when it calls for it while I fill the bass on the keys. We do some of our own arrangements so it is not a full on tribute, but still a lot of fun!

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all the stuff before animals was done with the 4 plus a sax or back up singer, and just the four pre 73.....I read an old interview with Gilmoure and they asked him how he did it and hes said that some parts stick out and are key ...thats what he plays and forget the other stuff. I used to do lots of floyd stuff and common sense will tell you what is key...the pre 77 stuff comes out real well and some things from the wall and animals works well too.

listen to some boot leg tapes if your not sure to hear what the floyd sounded like when they were a band.....

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I used to crew for a Floyd tribute band. 2 guitarists are pretty much required for most of the 'club friendly' floyd songs. And Gilmour usually has at least 1 if not 2 guitarists with him on stage, check the Delicate Sound of Thunder video or even the video at music.aol.com of the Live8 performance.

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When I do any cover I try to capture the essence of the song and not worry so much about production. THe cover band I play with has a couple of credos:

 

We don't rehearse.

We'll try anything as long as either I or the Bass player know it.

 

This is a really cool concept that breaks down the walls between the band and audience. And they respond!

 

Example: inspired by that Rock Star INXS show where the chick opened with Baba O'Riley, I got a hair to do it. How? Well I dabbled with using the GR33, but couldn't find a good enough sample/hold for it...and no way am I taking a sequencer. So I found a nice AC30 patch and used a Sample echo. Turned out you could just step on this buttton and play for 30 seconds then let go and it would just keep playing!

 

So Friday night we did it. 3 piece. The audience loved it!

 

Just have fun.

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