Do you fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way? Don't! When I was young I wanted to learn guitar, but I never seem to find the time. The plans had come to naught. Twenty years have got behind me, and I decided to take it up again before the time is gone, the song is over. 

If you're tired of lying in the sunshine or staying home to watch the rain, you can  learn to play the songs on Pink Floyd's legendary Dark Side of the Moon album. If you were waiting for someone or something to show you the way, it's here.

Pink Floyd: Learn the Songs from Dark Side of the Moon

This DVD is a step by step breakdown of David Gilmour's guitar styles and techniques taught by Nate LaPointe. It is an hour and a half long DVD published by Cherry Lane, a subdivision of Hal Leonard Publishing.


What is Dark Side of the Moon?

If you have to ask, all I can do is sigh and tell you that it was Pink Floyd's epic album released in 1973. It spent 11 consecutive years on the Billboard Top 200 Album chart and has also been on the charts the most weeks (1,611, the equivalent of over 30 years or most of the album's life). Yes, that is the record, and no, no other album has beaten it to date, nor even come close.  How's your favorite album doing there?  (I knew the 11 years without Wikipedia, but found out about the overall record from them under a wiki article on Billboard Records)

If you are a Pink Floyd fan, you already know and love David Gilmour's distinct guitar style of methodically bent strings and ringing notes.  He is one of my favorite guitar players to learn songs from, and in my lessons I have asked my guitar teacher to teach me several Pink Floyd songs, including Wish You Were Here, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Another Brick in the Wall, Sheep, and Childhoods End.

Nate LaPointe

Nate is an accomplished guitar player in his own right, he has been playing since he was five, and does a lot of session work. He has done several instructional videos for Cherry Lane. (info from LaPointe's own website)

I found him down to earth and easy to understand as I watched him play the chords and solos for the songs.  He doesn't talk down to you, he just guides you through the songs step by step, much like my own guitar teacher does.  He also takes his time, I never felt like I was rushed watching him.

Video Style

There are no fancy graphics here. A simple menu takes you to the song you want, or you can just play the DVD through. LaPointe appears on screen with his sky blue Fender Stratocaster and the camera focuses in close to his fretting hand on the neck of the Strat as he plays. LaPointe's voice guides you through what he is doing and what chords he is playing or what chord shape he is forming for the notes in any particular song section.

The video is shown in a picture in a picture set up. For me the video layout was the biggest weakness of this DVD. The big picture shows LaPointes fretting hand so you can see where his fingers are placed on the fret board, and moreover, how to hold your hand properly. However, on solos and individual note picking, you have to follow along with the smaller inset picture that shows shows a full picture of LaPointe including his strumming hand. Although LaPoint does say which string he is picking, and you can sort of see it, I would have found it MUCH MORE HELPFUL to have the TAB overlaid on the screen. That would have allowed me to not only see exactly which note is picked when, but to freeze the screen and TAB it out in my notebook.  Better yet, it would have been great to have included a TAB book with it.  I actually went out and purchased one so that I could also follow along. To be fair, most of the time, it is easy to see just what Nate is doing, but there were occasions where I was a bit lost as exactly which strings he was picking, and because of the straight on angle, which fingers were actually fretting strings and which were above them.

However, those that can learn completely by just LISTENING and watching without the music or Tab may do very well. LaPoint says out loud what he is doing each step of the way, including what chord form he is using, and what strings he is picking or strings he is strumming.  He will also tell you when and how far to bend. Anyone who listens to David Gilmour knows the importance of proper bending of notes. LaPointe also throws in helpful info about what effects to use, and suggests a Phaser effect pedal to get the gentle wahing sound. (Fans of Pink Floyd know the sound isn't quite like a Wah Wah pedal, but a more gentle phasing in and out of the chords). Fortunately, I have a phaser effect built into my Line 6 amplifier.  I also appreciate that Nate doesn't rush any of the steps, he takes his time and shows you section by section how the songs are played.

Advice and Presentation

Just on the opening number, Breathe the way LaPointe played through so you could hear and then broke it down step by step was quite helpful.  I like this song, it's very slow and relaxed. Sure enough, I turned on the phaser on my Line 6 Spider III amplifier and then I selected a blues amp setting to get just the right amount of twang and phasing in the licks. Watching how he formed the chords and played them really helps. I used this video more to supplement a TAB book that I purchased to go with it. Used this way, book and video together make an outstanding teaching experience.  YOu could definitely learn from just the DVD, but it would require much more memorization and a lot of stop start, pause, rewind and start agains on the DVD (which is what I did!) Of course, there is a lot of stop, start, pause and start again in learning a song on the guitar anyway.

My biggest mistake as a beginning guitar player is to follow the TAB moving my fingers all over the fret board. My teacher, and this video showed me how much easier it was to use my hand to set up in different chord patterns to easily get to all the notes with the least amount of finger movement. This is something I am gradually learning on my own, I think about where the notes are, and how my hand should be to minimize excessive finger movements.  At the end of each set of phrases, Nate will then play all the guitar parts you just learned over the backing tracks. 

Not everything is included here, the steel guitar parts that I found in my TAB book are only heard in the background on this DVD for example on the song Breathe.

Songs Included

Breathe, Time, Great Gig in the Sky (for guitar), Money, Us and Them, Any Colour You Like, Brain Damage and Eclipse are all included. On the Run of course has no guitar parts.

Extras Included

Nothing in the way of extras here, there is a brief introduction, and tuning, then it's right into the songs.

Testing

This instructional DVD was tested with a Pioneer 47A DVD player on a Westinghouse 27" TV while playing a 60th Anniversary Fender Telecaster with a Line 6 Spider III amp. The amp was set to a Blues amp setting with a bit of reverb and phaser effect.  I would have liked to have tried it out with the new Fender Custom Shop David Gilmour Stratocaster, but I don't own that. If anyone would care to send me one, my birthday is coming up.

Summary

If your head explodes with dark forebodings too, I'll see you on the dark side of the moon. I found this DVD very helpful, much more so than a TAB book by itself. I gave the DVD four stars, I would have given it five if they could have just even had some of the phrases tabbed on screen. Nevertheless, Nate LaPointe was a very understandable teacher, and really broke down the guitar work step by step for me to actually be able to play my favorite songs from Dark Side of the Moon

Recommended: Yes