Pink Floyd Songs Played Splendidly on a Harp Guitar: “Comfortably Numb,” “Wish You Were Here” & More

Harp gui­tars have been around since at least the 19th cen­tu­ry, and if you want a good, enthu­si­as­tic, intel­lec­tu­al argu­ment on the exact date of its birth, you’ll find many an orga­nol­o­gist ready to do that. (Here’s a page filled with infor­ma­tion about the sub­ject.) But it was only recent­ly, in 2014, that the Grove Dic­tio­nary of Musi­cal Instru­ments final­ly rec­og­nized the harp gui­tar as its own thing. New- or old-fan­gled as it might be, the harp gui­tar con­tains both the usu­al six strings and fret­ted neck and a neigh­bor­ing series of unstopped open strings. Well known musi­cians who have played them include John McLaugh­lin, David Lind­ley, and Rob­bie Robert­son.

But look up the instru­ment on the ‘net and there’s one name that will pop up before any­body else: 29 year old Cana­di­an Jamie Dupuis. He’s earned mil­lions of views on his YouTube chan­nel for arrang­ing and per­form­ing cov­ers of rock and met­al clas­sics.

He’s cer­tain­ly a fan of Pink Floyd, as you can see above in his cov­er of “Com­fort­ably Numb.” The ring­ing, echo­ing qual­i­ty of the harp guitar’s body suit the song well, as it starts to resem­ble a sort of synth-string wash.

The acoustic-based Floyd songs work as well as you might expect. “Wish You Were Here” for exam­ple.
Dupuis shows his skill with the more exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ics of Dark Side of the Moon. He adds a slide gui­tar and effects to “Time”:

…which works even bet­ter on “Breathe”:

And he brings out the very strange look­ing Dyer Elec­tric Gui­tar Harp for “Wel­come to the Machine,” using some dou­ble-track­ing to give him some solo­ing space.

You can hear all his Floyd cov­ers as a playlist here, and then check out his oth­er Harp Gui­tar cov­ers from Ozzy Osbourne to Tears for Fears here as well as some clas­si­cal arrange­ments.

Oh and yes, he also plays reg­u­lar ol’ acoustic gui­tar and some ban­jo. The man cer­tain­ly knows his way around a fret: enjoy!

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky” Played on the Theremin

Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” Mov­ing­ly Per­formed by the Six-String Sol­diers, of The Unit­ed States Army Field Band

Dire Straits’ “Sul­tans Of Swing” Played on the Gayageum, a Kore­an Instru­ment Dat­ing Back to the 6th Cen­tu­ry

A One-Man Pink Floyd Band Cre­ates Note-Per­fect Cov­ers of “Echoes,” “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Moth­er” & Oth­er Clas­sics: Watch 19-Year-Old Wun­derkind Ewan Cun­ning­ham in Action

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.