Brain Damage / Eclipse

You're welcome.

Let me know if you've any problems. I always worry about doing a lesson of a song that's a bit of a "holy grail" for many people, especially when I'm not doing it exactly by the book.

I've been using this as a lesson in my adult group classes for some time now, but that arrangement uses chords not in the original recording so as to make it a bit easier and also to make it work with the cirriculum that I've created for my beginners' classes. So it was a lot of fun to do this one.

I keep thinking of doing one on Comfortably Numb, if for no other reason than to do a lesson on developing a feel for switching seamlessly between full chords and partials and arpeggios, but so far it's proving to be a bear to write. Some things just seem easier to show than to tell. I'll keep at it, though...

Peace

Thank you David, lovely song.

Don't you just love those changes

A big thanks from me too David,

It's amazing to find how simply constructed Pink Floyd's songs actually are. When you hear them they sound so complicated. So thanks for bringing yet another of their classics to us struggling guitarists and enabling us to play these songs and live out our dreams with a bit of concentration and practice thrown in of course.

ps
A couple of guys played this recently at our open mic venue. They had asked for requests and some young lads said play "Dark Side Of The Moon". They were astounded to be told there wasn't actually a song by that title and, that it was actually called "Brain Damage" and "the dark side of the moon" was part of the lyrics. But they got their wish and heard the song. "Great Fun".

Chris

David,

Being a rank beginner, I hate to even bring this up, but I want to get your opinion, advice, or whatever. :oops:

I'm not feeling the G chord in there. Now, I haven't compared it to the recording, just going with my gut, but the G sounds too happy in the middle of all that. Am I crazy? Is there something else that could make the G sound a bit darker?

Thanks again.

Hi Fred

The G chord in the "chorus section?" You could make it a G5 power chord by either (a) playing it totally on the low four strings (3500xx) or going with a "full" power chord (3x0033). For that last fingering, just tip the finger fretting the bass note (G at the third fret of the low E (sixth) string) slightly so that it blunts out the A string when you strum.

Hope this helps. And everyone has different likes and feelings about chords. Nothing you should worry about. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I teach this to my classes with slightly different chords and part of that is because of what they've already learned and part of it is also personal preference. I really like B7 instead of Bm7 when it gets to the end of the chorus section.

Peace

Hi David. New member here, and I wanted to thank you for your great lessons; in particular the Brain Damage/Eclipse lesson. I'm still a beginner and recently got the sheet music for Dark Side of the Moon and was surprised to see that many of the fingerpicking parts were relatively simple. Still, I couldn't make the songs sound right until I read this lesson and found the freedom to leave the written fingerpicking behind and get creative, as you've shown. So many thanks for that.

Any additional Pink Floyd (I see you've got Wish You Were Here) would be appreciated. One song I've been working on is Nobody Home from The Wall, which on the album is played on the piano. It's slow and beautiful and would benefit from your creative treatment. Keep up the great work.

On example 5 in the "Brain Damage" lesson https://www.guitarnoise.com/lesson/brain-damage/ , what fingering should i use to make the picking easy (on the D7 chord).

Thanks all
Udi

From the chord sequences in that lesson I can see that every time the D7 is used it is followed by a G.

Therefore, finger the D7 with the 3rd finger on the 1st string 2nd fret, 1st finger on the 2nd string 1st fret, and 2nd finger on the 3rd string 2nd fret - then the change up to the G chord means you can use your 3rd finger as a guide, simply sliding it up one to the 3rd fret to allow you to finger the G correctly.

A :-)

Thanks

The moving of the 3rd finger is still a bit hard for me, but at least now i know what i have to work on.
(Originaly i thought of using the 4th finger, but i guess this is harder?)