How David Gilmour's Backwards Guitar Solo on 'Empty Spaces' Was Created

The solo on “Empty Spaces” is a textbook example of tape reversal. Gilmour recorded a standard electric guitar solo, then the tape was flipped so the audio plays backwards on the finished track. It’s not a “played backwards” performance — it’s a normal recording simply reversed in the mix.

Reversing gives the notes a unique attack-less swell. The pick attack becomes a gentle fade-in, and the natural decay turns into a backward-sounding blurt. Combined with heavy reverb and compression, it creates the eerie, liquid glide that perfectly complements the song’s paranoid atmosphere.

Pink Floyd had used backwards guitar before (notably on “Empty Spaces”‘s thematic cousin “The Happiest Days of Our Lives,” which also features reversed drums), but this is the clearest example of a straight-ahead solo being inverted. Gilmour didn’t learn to play it backwards — he just let the tape machine do the work.