The Dance of the Fingers

Life is a dance and we are all dancers. We move in new directions and discover what we always had within us all along but see it for the first time; a movement of calculated chaos that chooses to please the mind.

Pink Floyd saw this need in us to let go and let loose and they gave birth to a whole new dance altogether; one that rested on the neck of the guitar, making our fingers our feet and the frets our floor. With Barret as the brain, Waters the spine and Gilmour as the feet to this unusual dancer, the sound that escaped the amplifiers found a quick solace in the hearts and the minds of millions.

The Blues might have come from the deep southern taverns of the United States, but it was never as calculated and precise to invoke a cosmic thought within their listener. Gilmour used the blues as his notebook rather than a textbook and altered it in a way the guitarist could actually walk across the 24 frets of a guitar and produce a non- cacophonous melody that drilled its way into the soul. It was very similar to that of the classical Blues scale, punctuating the notes that make up a chord, but Gilmour mixed this with the pentatonic scale, used mostly in rock music. This not only gave a new touch to the sound but brought a sense of rejuvenation from the moody blues. The blues now rested on another set of thoughts.

“Coming Back to Life” from the album The Division Bell, was probably one of the best examples of this scale which is so complex but yet again has a reassuring simplicity to the sound. Gilmour wrote it as a memoir of his change in life and his coming back into reality after his drug problem. The magic of the song lies in the notes and chords chosen to discuss such a dark matter with such a happy tone, as if to look back in relief and not terror. Any musician who covers Floyd would know of this peculiar dance along the entire neck of the guitar, testing up to almost three octaves of pitch, but to both the listener and the musician, a feeling of calm sets in when the notes fall perfectly in place, causing the mind to sway, and eventually, dance...