AGRADECIMIENTOS
II. FUNDAMENTOS TEÓRICOS
2. LA RELACIÓN DE INCLUSIÓN DE CLASES DESDE LA LINGÜÍSTICA COGNITIVA
2.3.1. F RAME N ET
2.3.2.3. Los verbos en WordNet
DAVID GILMOUR
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Guitarist Presents Guitar Gods
Gilmour laughs, saying he’s just not that technical.
But he’s willing to take a stab at the pedals he used in making the album.
“I didn’t use the DigiTech Whammy pedal on this album at all,” he says, when we mention how arresting its use was on On An Island. “I did play with it a couple of times to try it, but it just didn’t seem like the right thing at this moment on this album. I couldn’t find a spot for it.
“I actually haven’t used a Big Muff for quite a few years,” he continues. “Certainly not on this album. I don’t think I used it on On An Island, either. I tend to use is a [BK Butler] Tube Driver these days, often with a compressor feeding into it. On this one, it’s actually pretty much untreated. On a couple of tracks, I’ve just gone through with a compressor and used the output volume to be the overdrive. But yeah, I just fiddle until something starts sounding nice.”
As for how he’ll approach his sound for upcoming live shows, Gilmour chuckles.
“I don’t memorise what I use, if that’s what you’re asking,” he says. “I just don’t work that way. I probably should try a bit harder to make notes of these things and sort all that out, but I’m afraid I don’t. I just try to get something that sounds similar when I go into rehearsal.
I just press a button on the pedalboard on stage, see what comes close, and then stick with that.”
“I didn’t use the DigiTech Whammy pedal on this album at all. I did play with it a couple of times, but it just didn’t seem like the right thing at this moment on this album”
DAVID GILMOUR
38
Guitarist Presents Guitar Gods
D
avid Gilmour clearly likes water. His famed houseboat studio, Astoria, is moored on the Thames near Hampton.Today, Guitarist is at his other studio, Medina, near Brighton and overlooking the Channel. Aptly, it was these two venues that were employed to record the bulk of the final Pink Floyd studio album, The Endless River. Gilmour has declined to talk any more about The Endless River: he thinks there’s been “too much fuss” already. But he has sanctioned his guitar tech, Phil Taylor, to guide us through some of his studio setup. Prepare to be boggled.
Medina is smaller than you may expect for a musician of Gilmour’s legendary status, but size isn’t everything:
Medina is bespoke to Gilmour’s needs.
“It was a derelict storage unit when David bought it three years ago,” Phil Taylor explains.
Once the building’s ‘shell’ had been renovated, Taylor got to work on bespoke appointments. The control room’s mixing desk is hand-built and on wheels, meaning Taylor can access its rear for servicing.
Gilmour has his own custom control room rack, with switching that allows him to turn on any combination of amps in the live room – if he fancies recording in the control room. Even the wiring of Medina is custom-designed by Taylor.
He explains: “Because David records with single-coil guitars – his Strats, his Teles – particular attention was paid to the electrical installation to avoid creating mains power ‘radiating’ and interference. The entire building was wired in shielded mains cable. All earthing is connected to the regular main ‘company’ earth – except the audio-technical earth, which has two 60-foot copper rods sunk into the ground. All lighting systems are run in 12 volts DC, and the technical studio power is derived from a balancing transformer.”
The Black Strat
David Gilmour’s most celebrated guitar is something of a ‘mongrel’. He bought the Fender from Manny’s Music store in New York in May 1970 during Pink Floyd’s USA tour. Gilmour had, just weeks earlier, bought his first black Fender Strat at Manny’s, but it was soon stolen, along with much of Floyd’s rig. Floyd cancelled their remaining US dates, but David again visited Manny’s and bought this before returning to the UK. The Black Strat was first played by Gilmour at the Bath Festival in June 1970. Serendipitously, Phil attended the show as a punter – four years before he began tech’ing for Floyd. Gilmour replaced a lot of his older Fenders in the 80s with Fender’s then-new 1957 reissues, and the Black Strat was on display at the Dallas and Miami Hard Rock Cafes until 1997, after which Gilmour played it for Floyd’s 2005 Live 8 show.
It remains his most iconic instrument.
Hard Knock Cafe
“When we put the Kahler on [the Black Strat], it seemed to deaden the sound somewhat. It fell out of David’s favour when the new ’57 reissue Strats came out, so he agreed to loan the Black Strat to the Hard Rock Cafe.
“In time, we asked for it back. I called the Hard Rock head of memorabilia, but they said, ‘But we own it, now.’
‘No, you don’t!’ I had all the paperwork that said it was a loan. Eventually, we got it back, but it came back with the Animals tour-case missing, the knobs gone, and filthy. I put it all back together and put it in the studio.
“David didn’t use the Black Strat again until I suggested he try it at the Live 8 rehearsals. ‘Oh, all right!’
David says. But when he started playing it again, we suddenly went from that EMG sound to the single coils.
That was it. He was back to the Black Strat.”