We Wish You a Merry Christmas by David Gilmour

Intro & Tone

We couldn't do 12 songs without covering David Gilmour and Pink Floyd. This track lends itself perfectly to his style, as we can use really cool mini arpeggio runs, alongside the main melody. We also pull the track around a bit in terms of timing, and adding a whole new section to the start and end, using the relative minor. You will LOVE playing along to this one, so let's get you started by checking out the tone.

The base of our rhythm tone is using a Soldano SLO-100 style preset in TONEX by IK Multimedia. You can see that we are really driving the amp via the gain channel, to get plenty of sustain on our lead tone. Plus, we're using a Delay plugin (1/4 notes) in Logic and adding the finishing touches to the sound with a compressor and reverb.

We wanted to use a Strat style guitar, as that it was Gilmour would use typically, and felt as though this awesome Fret-King guitar just worked perfectly. The pickup selector was on the bridge the entire time, and the tone was all on 10!

The Lead Guitar

For the lead guitar part, we were based in the key of E minor & G Major. On paper, these are the same key and simply the relative major and minor scales. However, there is a very clear shift from minor to major when we change from E minor to G major. So, for the first few licks, and last riff, we're using the E minor pentatonic scales. Then, for the rest of the track, the G major scale.

One important thing to understand with this track too, is that it does modulate as the chords progress. So, we begin in G major, moving to the 4th which is C major. Then from C major we go to A major, which should be a minor chord in the key of G major (the second) but as we change it to major we create a secondary dominant chord that leads us to the D major. From there we play the B as a major, instead of minor as well, creating another secondary dominant to the E minor chord. Then we loop back to C, D and G major.

Yep... it's a tad complicated theory-wise, but very cool and a great example of how you can manipulate chords to pull in other directions away from the typical chords in a key. Long story short, it's very wise to arpeggiate some of these chords in our lead playing! You can see the shapes we use in the fretboard diagrams

The Rhythm Guitar

If you simply wanted to strum along to this track, you can do so with the following chords:

If you'd like to get more to grips with David Gilmour's style, start our David Gilmour Player Study right away!