Author: Ingo

Amps, Mark Knopfler gear

The King of Clean – Mark Knopfler’s Tone King Imperial amp – Hand-built vintage technology and sound

Everyone who has seen Mark Knopfler live on one of his recent tours might have notived that cool-looking turquoise combo amp next to Knopfler’s Marshall cabinets. Knopfler’s second guitarist Richard Bennet also plays one. It is the Tone King Imperial. Tone King amps are built from selected quality parts by Mark Bartel in Baltimore. Mark does all the woodworking, upholstery, and electronics assembly himself to have total control about the […]

Dire Straits/ Mark Knopfler live pictures and videos, Misc

Rare video of Brendan Crocker gig featuring Mark Knopfler

Today while surfing youtube I found this rare video which I have never seen before, showing Mark Knopfler as a guest on a Brendan Crocker gig in Leeds, June 18, 1989 (the youtube video title says July 18, June 18 is confirmed and I doubt that there was a second gig one month later). For those who don’t know him, Brendan Crocker is an old friend of Mark’s, also a […]

MK guitar style and licks

Rasgueado and other flamenco techniques in Sultans of Swing

Sultans of Swing from Dire Straits’  first album is surely one of THE songs that comes to mind when talking about fingerstyle guitar playing. In addition to Mark Knopfler’s unique playing style it also features some striking Spanish-sounding elements, starting from the chord  progression itself to some flamenco-like strumming techniques – which is this blog article, or rather the embedded video, is about. The typical flamenco stroke is called Rasgueado […]

Effects, Mark Knopfler gear, Recording

Rhett Davies and the sound of the first Dire Straits album

In the blog post about the Sultans of Swing lead guitar track that was made available through the Guitar Hero 5 game we had some interesting discussions about some technical aspects of the guitar sound. One was whether the effects we hear (compression, chorus, reverb) were added later in the mix or were recorded right with the instrument track. Unfortunately there is no direct information available so we will probably […]

Misc

Why not become an author for this blog?

After more than 100 articles in this blog I am still not running out of ideas for future posts. I just wish I had more time for blogging and producing video tutorials. I know that many readers of this blog are also experts and wonder if anyone would like to write an article for the blog. Dermot was the first with his article about his sunburst Schecter Strat copy. So, […]

MK guitar style and licks

Southbound Again riff

Here is a small video clip in which I play the Southbound Again riff, this time the studio version (I put another video online with the completely different live version a few weeks ago). I played it in standard tuning. A few years ago I read an interview where Mark said that it was open G tuning (which somewhat surprised me here). Anyway, it works fine in standard tuning I […]

Misc, MK guitar style and licks

Sensational: Sultans of Swing guitar track solo – without backing tracks – from Guitar Hero 5

I reported about the vocals only and karaoke tracks of Sultans of Swing in the last post. If you read all the comments there you will already have heard the latest news: a guitar-only track is also available. They all seem to be from the Guitar Hero 5 game. It seems the makers of the game had access to the multitrack recording of Sultans. The guitar track does not only […]

Misc, MK guitar style and licks

Sultans of Swing: Studio version vocals alone, karaoke track, plus the last seconds – unheard before

Found a link in the amarkintime forum today to three audio clips of Sultans of Swing: a) complete b) only vocals (!!), and c) without vocals. Those tracks must be made from the original multitrack recording, and they are even a few seconds longer than what is one the CD. No fade out – instead another lick unheard before. I have no idea yet where these come from, but very […]