Watch me playing a version of the Santana classic ‘Samba Pa Ti’. The original stands for a distorted guitar sound on a humbucker guitar – so I tried with a clean guitar sound on my self-built Bubinga / Pao Ferro Strat instead. Santana normally plays with a pick – I played Knopfler-style fingerpicking here. But did you know that Santana also plays this song with bare fingers – at least […]
In his video I am playing the intro and the 1st solo of ‘Lions’ (from the 1978 first Dire Straits album) over a backing track. I am playing both parts three times, using a different ‘classic-Knopfler’ guitar each time. These are my ‘Partocaster’ for the Fender sound, a Suhr to represent Knopfler’s 90ies sound (no matter that Lions was never performed in the 90ies), and my self-built clone of a […]
In this video I am explaining a simple trick how to improvize over major 7 chords using standard minor scales. I made a backing track with Fmaj7 and Cmaj7 chord changes and jammed over it using my self-built Dream Machine Strat. It is the very first I have ever built, with a flamed birch body and a birds-eye maple neck. I am also explaining how I got the guitar sound […]
With this blog post I want to feature a website that hosts one of the most astonishing guitar collections in the world: Guitar Motel – guitarmotel.net It is not only a collection with many great vintage guitars like Fenders or Gibsons but also with exactly those guitars that are ‘the ones’ for us Knopfler fans – like Van-Nuys era Schecters (I guess the biggest collection of these in the world), […]
Here are two videos from the official Bob Dylan Youtube channel, posted some months ago already. It is only a mimic session for a promotional video but it is from the original recording session at the New York Power station recording studio in April/May 1983. And it features an alternate mix of the two songs, plus various other differences from the released album version, like different vocal takes. For ‘gear-investigators’ […]
Don’t miss my latest video on Youtube. Here I am playing and explaining some riffs with that typical thumb-and-fingers picking pattern. You’ve heard such riffs on Knopfler/Dire Straits songs like Two Young Lovers, Walk of Life, Next Time I’m in Town, Overnight Sensation (by Tine Turner), Industrial Disease, Poor Boy’s Blues, and countless others.
I decided to release a video of a song that I recorded 20 years ago. It is less Knopfler-stylish than the guitar videos I normally post here but more in the mood of some Pink Floyd tunes. However, the long outro guitar solo on a Les Paul is of course inspired by Mark’s playing style and technique. Making the video which is based mostly on a slide show was much […]
I made another video some weeks ago where I talked about doubling guitar riffs for a fatter sound. I played a Japanese Erlewine Automatic, a very cool guitar with one humbucker, and dialed in a sound similar to the Dire Straits classic Money for Nothing. I did not try to get as close as possible to the original sound which is very much a typical 80ies sound, bright with some […]
In the early 80ies – in the Love over Gold / Local Hero / Infidels era – Mark Knopfler used a metallic blue Japanese Fernandes Strat copy with Seymour Duncan pickups in the studio. John Suhr once told me that in his opinion Mark created some of his best guitar sounds of that time with this guitar. If you wonder what happened to this guitar or where it is today, […]
Here are two videos I recorded to try out another guitar I am building on: a Schecter Dream Machine-like Strat with an ash body and a birdseye-maple neck, with a brass tremolo and a ‘Making Movies’ pickguard. In other words, a Strat inspired by Mark Knopfler’s S8001 Schecter Strat. It is not finished but assembled for tests of sound, playability, and stability. And I must say, I am very impressed […]