Big Love Live

[seteca]

Originally posted by face of glass
Sure, for "Big Love" and "Go Insane" anyway. But not for "Here Comes The Sun", I think.

On HCTS he was using a Turner RS-6 guitar going through a Roland VG-8 synth pad. The RS-6 is a steel strung guitar so using a synth pad gives a sweeter sounding texture than using a simple DD-3 delay, but ultimately the end result is the same. i.e. to slightly sweeten the sound of the guitar - and not to assist him in any way.

Other than that one unit it wasn't going through anything else, and his playing on that song is mindblowing and one of his most technically challenging pieces.

My point is that unlike (to use an extreme example) a typical live Pink Floyd solo which critically depends on a large number of FX units, ALL of Lindsey's acoustic songs would still sound 95% the same and instantly recognisable even if all/any of his FX units were switched off - they're there because the song sounds that little bit better with it/them, only.

Originally posted by face of glass
I thought that he benefits from the delay in some other way too; if his thumb lets him down when he's doing those quavers it isn't audible to the audience because of the FX. Or that's what I once read from one of the guitar wizzes on this forum.

I think I remember which post you're talking about, but the writer was talking about him/herself - not Lindsey. Yes it's true that if you miss one of the bass notes then a correct delay will make your mistake seem less apparent, but it would still be very much noticeable (a picked bass note and a delayed bass note are clearly distinguishable, even if you're using the finest Lexicon delay racks) and I've never heard Lindsey miss a single bass note as he is an extremely gifted Travis picker. Also, if you increase the level of the feedback on the delay unit to such a level where a played note and the delayed note are close to indistinguishable in terms of volume, it means you have to be even MORE accurate and pretty much perfect in your playing to avoid making any mistakes - the slightest error would horribly echo right through that part of the song.

Originally posted by face of glass
Keith Richards once said of Robert Johnson that he seemed to have "three brains" because Johnson was capable of playing the boogie bass figure along with the melody and also singing at the same time. Lindsey's struggled his way to the same situation too, but "Big Love" doesn't have the same spontaneity that Robert Johnson's pieces have.

No "Big Love" certainly does not have the spontaneity of those Robert Johnson pieces, but the songs have totally different roots. Robert Johnson was not a Travis picker (he simply played the melody and bass independently at the same time) and was playing blues songs (which are by their very nature the most spontaneous and improvisional songs in the Western world), while Lindsey's roots lie in bluegrass (a style whose songs are generally fixed, highly melodic, pieces) and "Big Love" could very easily be defined as a classical guitar composition. I would not say that Lindsey "struggled to get himself to the same situation", because he was going for a totally different type of song and performance. (Furthermore, some live versions/rehearsals of "The Chain", "Landslide", "Never Going Back Again" and "World Turning" from the 70s clearly show that he was already an amazing Travis picker and could improvise whenever he felt like it.) Lindsey said (not literally) that "Big Love" was the start of something he'd been wanting to do for a very long time i.e. create a song where there are enough simultaneous parts from one guitar which would allow him to keep the number of other musicians on stage with him to a minimum, and for some songs make that number equal to zero. He never implied that he was going to use that method to give his songs any more or less spontaneity.

Originally posted by face of glass
LB obviously went through plenty of rehearsing before he started to pretend that he, too, has three brains

It's not just Keith Richards who used the "3 brains" term. Guitarists (and other musicians) who are able to play two independent parts at the same are often labelled as people who are able to "divide their brain into two". People who can sing (well!) on top of that are said to be able to "divide their brain into three". I think that unless you sat down with both Robert Johnson and Lindsey Buckingham and timed how much they practiced and rehearsed their respective songs, it's impossible to say which one of the two is more worthy of the "3 brain accolade". There's nothing to "pretend" about - they are both musical geniuses and legends, and that's as far as their similarities go.