What Makes This Song Great? Ep.104 Pink Floyd

hey everyone i'm rick biato and today's ever the music it's what makes this song great episode 104. the band is pink floyd and the song is [Music] you know what it is coming up next comfortably numb was on pink floyd's album entitled the wall which was released on november 30th 1979 when i was in 12th grade senior in high school and the single comfortably numb actually was released in june of 1980 right when i graduated from high school so i have incredible memories of this being on the radio this is really kind of an anthem of me you know before i went to college just graduating from high school i mean it's a very very vivid memory when it was on the radio and it means a lot to me this song i think it's one of the most beautiful songs ever guitar solos both of them are incredible and one of the things about this song is that it has the perfect blend of roger waters and david gilmore all the dark sections that are in b minor the the first part is roger waters he wrote the lyrics to the song and david gilmour sings the chorus when it goes to d major it also has these two guitar solos the first one that i really love everybody loves the second soul i love the first soul i love both solos but the first solo is so anthemic so he's got a solo in d major and in the relative minor b minor but the darkness of the verse and the the kind of heavenly anthemic quality of the chorus really makes this song such a moving moving piece of music that i still feel the same way when i listen to it i always do a prep evening before i make it what might makes a song great and i look for things out there that i may not have found i look at interviews from people i watched many interviews of roger waters and of david gilmore anything where they're talking about the song i came across some really interesting things one of the things i came across was the original demo that david gilmore did where he has no lyrics basically of the chorus melody that he had done for a solo record and it abandoned he had that finished it and they played it for the producer bob ezran who said yeah let's work on this the demo sounds like this [Music] do now that demo is played gilmore explains on this interview you can find it on youtube he plays it on a high string guitar he had asked somebody what a high string guitar was he goes into the story about one of his friends bands was working with the producer and they used a high string guitar in combination with a just regular six string acoustic and so this drummer was explaining to it to him but he didn't even know what it was so he essentially created a nashville tuned guitar which means that these strings are all up the active except this particular one the low e is up two octaves the way that david gilmore strung it that's where you get this sound of the demo you just [Music] heard really beautiful on the d normally you wouldn't leave that low string open but that note that e becomes the add nine and david gilmore actually in this interview explains that it's the ninth and that's why it sounds so good he said he tried to keep as many open strings as he could but then [Music] it just has a beautiful beautiful sound so when they heard that i think that they knew wow we got something here then roger waters in an interview explains that they had a disagreement he and david gilmour i'm telling you all these things before we even listen to the song but about the basic rhythm tracks they'd cut the rhythm tracks one day and they all were seem to be happy about it but the next day david gilmore came back in and they re-cut the rhythm tracks when i say rhythm tracks i mean like guitar bass and drums because he wasn't quite happy with the timing in some spots so what they ended up doing is they actually edited together different sections like maybe one verse of roger waters the chorus part of david gilmour and you know and they came up with it with a basic bed tracks as we call them of the song as we know it that appears and and now roger waters says that they couldn't even tell where these edits were afterwards so once the song gets done roger waters explains that they sent the tapes not with bob ezran not with gilmore not with roger waters none of the pink floyd guys got sent to new york where michael caiman the uh the late great arranger and orchestrator put in all the incredible orchestration himself without the band being there which i'll also play which really makes the song it takes it to a different place so with that being said let's check out the intro part of the song and then slide guitar [Music] first harmony echo guitar [Music] no one interesting thing about this is that there are three phrases before it goes to the chorus which is not you know typically you'll either have two or four so it's actually a three phrase verse and then it hits the chorus when it goes to the relative major d major one of the things about this though that really makes the track is michael caiman's arrangement his orchestration that's hidden behind these beautiful layers of echoing guitars and keyboards is this listen this you can hear that slide guitar is added to this but this is the orchestra along with those effect instruments you're the echoing guitar but you're the brass you're the duh that ninth on that chord [Music] another thing that makes this third phrase of the first verse unique and beautiful is this right here so there's two things going on right there you hear that so on the b minor you're hearing that the second resolve back to the root so it's a sus2 and then you hear it [Applause] the seventh resolved down to the fifth right but the second and third second and flat third are next to each other so it creates that distance on the downbeat and it gives a haunting quality i love those voicings that's what it'd be on the guitar but that's actually done in the orchestration and i think it makes the voice roger waters the mood of what he's saying even more intense because of that dissonance that resolves right there let's check out the solo vocal right [Music] and there acoustic guitar [Music] that acoustic when you listen to it it sounds like the high string acoustic right because you can you can hear those high strings in the top of the strum listen on the downbeat of the chorus listen [Music] definitely so he's playing that i strung up your stitches but really the star of this in addition that is the orchestration so the strings at the beginning of the chorus start with this figure [Music] that's a d add 9 chord starting a f e d that's what creates the movement under those long held cords and you get the high strung guitar strumming away but that that creates the harmonic movement now on the a chord it's going so you have that sus four to three there so it's a e d c sharp that d to c sharp adds that dissonance that really draws your ear in and gives it that emotional vibe so throughout this chorus you're going to hearing these add nines to these kind of what i call add fours right so then it goes down to c same pattern [Music] really really beautiful let's listen to it in the mix here [Music] another thing is the upbeat accents that happen that help move along the chord progression um check it out you hear that sus in there here's the accent two three it's just really in the base there but it makes it again bass doesn't upbeat accent and then [Music] they bring in the harmony there on that third phrase and it's beautiful one thing that i will always say about david gilmour is he is the most underrated singer absolutely a phenomenal singer when he joined pink floyd i don't really think that he considered himself a singer i think it took him a while for him to get used to the fact that yeah he's a great lead singer and his voice i can't imagine anyone else's voice on here especially up in that register it just makes the chorus explode when it gets to that third phrase though just beautiful [Music] double-tracked [Music] when i was a child i had a fever [Music] my hands felt like two balloons [Music] once again let's listen to what the orchestra's doing during this part in the chorus listen [Music] my hands felt just like [Music] okay all those upbeat accents and the vocals to really make it move along because it's really a ballad in a way or mid-tempo [Music] sun [Music] harmony's amazing and then [Music] that climbing line the hair [Music] let's do it with the whole band playing [Music] you notice there's no kick drum there which is really so the kick's going boom boom boom nothing with it there's really no upbeat kicks along with roger waters baselines that happened there in that whole chorus listen [Music] as a matter of fact i think that that's what makes it not sound clunky right you don't even notice it it's such a powerful move in the base walking up i love the feel that happens right before the high point in the chorus check this out [Music] [Music] crash [Music] and then there's no kick that goes with that base right there [Music] [Applause] [Applause] is [Music] um [Music] so okay that solo is one of the greatest if not the greatest guitar solos ever followed by the one at the end of the song that most people think is the greatest guitar solo so let's talk a little bit about that okay so one of the things that he starts off with is the rake he rakes across the muted strings which is very much like a jimi hendrix kind of thing or stevie ray vaughan but he rakes right into the third of the d major chord right g major and then he goes to the sus4 which makes us so emotional we go the sus4 to the third again then he bends into the fifth of the a chord and then then comes down this a sus right sus4 then a major triad and then arrives back on the d the note d the tonic it's a very powerful end of the phrase then he goes back into that [Applause] that is just so emotional so beautiful love this okay that's really beautiful he bends into that sus4 again [Applause] then bends up into the fifth of the egg i love this sound he's playing on a [Music] that's really [Music] [Applause] goes up to the fifth of the c chord [Music] and then uses that lydian the sharp four [Music] and then six to five on g and then there's your major seven then the g chord and then he bends in from the sharp four of the five and then this lydian i love that then g sus the g and then [Music] then he goes to the and he does here on the c goes back to that sharp four so he's constantly going sus fours on the d major sus4 on the a major sharp 11 on the c major major seventh on the g major all those upper extensions or what i call the haunting tones right those notes give it so much emotion if he was just playing roots or playing the pentatonic scale it wouldn't be nearly as interesting as these melodic modal lines the second verse enters believe it or not at two minutes and 49 seconds or so now that's like the length of a pop song of today what's really weird about the song if you think of it so the first verse is three phrases then you have the chorus which is really divided into multiple sections and then you have a guitar solo after the first chorus okay then we're to the second verse so it's very very odd form let's check out the second verse [Music] check out what's going on here in the orchestration you have all these you have that beautiful background vocal but i can hear it sounds like a harpsichord but i think it's the high strung guitar that's going on in there that's kind of picking through the chords let's listen in the mix again [Music] [Applause] let's go to the check out the orchestration again right there listen once again you have that ninth in there [Music] it's just beautiful and then and you're hearing that that sharp four and fifth on the uh g major chord that lydia note they're constantly coming back to that listening then a now here's the sharp four listen [Music] beautiful okay so only two phrases happen on the second verse right and you hear the swell that leads you into the chorus listen that dissonance there of that char for [Music] beautiful now listen to downbeat again [Music] so the swell happens and then it's time to go [Music] and you hear that guitar again the guitar just announces bring on the downbeat of the of the chorus i just love that and then voice switching [Music] it's such a straight beat everything is so simple all the movement is going on in the strings [Music] oh let's listen to vocals there i mean the harmonies are amazing [Music] and their strings oh brass beautiful high strings [Music] love the simple time phil right there listen and then [Music] another thing after that drum fill i love it it's a very majestic drum bar listen i love you it's so rock right it's so heavy it's so simple that's just caveman drumming right there listen [Music] and then though and then no upbeat accent with the bass is beautiful he just never goes there and that's got to be a conscious decision that they're all playing that i wonder if that's one of the things that the argument was between roger waters and david gilmore is maybe the kick drum was hitting on those and one of them didn't like it actually it was like that doesn't feel right it makes it too clunky [Music] and then extends right [Music] okay the out chorus solo what do you say about that right i mean it's just absolute pure genius here we go [Music] i love the squeal there tons of reverb [Music] oh i love it [Music] no i love how he bends from the ninth that's like a big thing [Music] he's using that b minor pentatonic he likes to use it at ninth gets kind of that dorian sounded half step bends [Music] triplets awesome [Music] i'm not gonna just i'm not gonna i'm not gonna play over this and make it sound worse i'm gonna let david gilmore do the talking here because it's [Music] [Applause] amazing [Music] [Music] so powerful you notice how the drums follow right along with a triplet lick too [Music] right here awesome [Music] it actually sounds like a china symbol to me i don't know if he's playing if that's if that's what he's playing there but the way this works [Applause] it's a crash time two and four [Music] and then [Music] [Applause] okay once again here we have that [Music] when i heard david gilmour play that that was like a big influence in my playing that the use of that no and bending the second into the minor third and we also have the caveman fill that happens right before that high part in the guitar listen you cannot go wrong with the cavemen especially at these tempos it makes it so heavy so dark and [Music] [Applause] [Music] all the single crashes oh so good [Music] that's why we're still listening to this song 41 years later richard wright he passed away in 2008 the keyboardist and nick mason is just a great drummer the drums on this are incredibly well played but the juxtaposition of those two of david gilmore and roger waters just that this song really showcases what they do best the moody vocals of roger waters a great lyricist the incredible lead singing the high singing of david gilmore he once again and really underrated singer and then these two incredible guitar solos and the addition of michael came in the arranger who also died suddenly back in i believe 2003 or so a real really young guy he was 31 years old when he did the orchestration to this and the song would not be what it is without his contribution as well bob ezran the producer this is just an absolute brilliant record and um so this what makes a song great series would not be complete without pink floyd and i'm still have the same feeling when i hear this song as i did when i was a senior in high school

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 1,693,546

Rating: 4.9654989 out of 5

Keywords: rick beato, everything music, rick, beato, music, music theory, music production, education, hit song analysis, song analysis, music analysis, how to write a hit song, rock mixing, guitar lesson, Pink Floyd, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Richard Wright, Nick Mason, what makes this song great?, The Wall, comfortably numb pink floyd, bob ezrin, Dark side of the moon, pop song analysis, guitar solo, Wish you were here, money pink floyd, time pink floyd

Id: 5-gF-tmblA8

Length: 31min 6sec (1866 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/grelch]

Yes, I know I put an 'e' instead of 'y'. i don't know what happened there. Only been listening to this song for 42 years.

[u/jackstraw97]

So glad Rick is finally doing some PF content! Thought they were “blockers” as he likes to say. Very pleasantly surprised.

[u/bartlettdmoore]

In the video Beato was able to isolate instruments and the orchestra. How do you think he was able to do that? Do you think he has access to the original multitrack 'stems'?

Genuinely curious!

[u/The_Tall_Lebowski]

Rick's best What Makes This Song Great episode!