I already wrote three articles about Japanese vintage Strats, an introduction and a portrait of the fiesta red and the pink metallic Squier JV. I noticed that a lot of people surf into this site because of these articles, so I want to release a fourth one, this time about the almost legendary Tokai Springy Sound Strats. Many years ago I had on of these myself. This was about 1980. […]
The video in today’s post demonstrates an important aspect of Mark Knopfler’s unique guitar style: the blend of rhythm and lead guitar playing. I remember the day I first saw Mark Knopfler on TV in the late 70ies. I knew their stuff from the records, and I heard his lead guitar playing on these. What was striking when seeing him play was that his hands were apparently doing something all […]
Eastbound Train was one of Dire Straits’ first songs. It was recorded as a demo before the first album was recorded, and it is the song of the earliest Dire Straits live recording that exists (from the Hope & Anchor, London, December 1977). This live version was released as the b-side of the single Sultans of Swing in 1978, but with exception of the demo (that has a totally different […]
The b5 notes means the flattened fifth note of any scale. If we have e.g. a C-major scale (c – d -e -f -g – a – b – c ), the fifth note is the g , and if this note is flattened, we get the gb. The same logic works with any major or minor (or other) scale. The following video demonstrates the usage and the position of […]
With this post I am proud to annouce the 50th article of this blog, which went online on August 10, 2008. 50 articles in 104 days means an average of 0.49 article per day, or 3.4 articles every week. In these three months the blog built up a reputation among Mark Knopfler fans and guitar players, and the number of daily visitors is still steadily rising. Thanks to every visitor […]
In 1982 Dire Straits recorded their Love over Gold album in New York. According to Knopfler himself, he spent some time before with learning new chords and licks from a book by Mickey Baker. This circumstance, and the collaboration with Jazz musicians of the New York jazz scene – like Mike Mainierei, Michael & Randy Brecker or Tony Levin – seem to be the reason why sudenly more jazz elements […]
Today I surfed into some early Dire Straits photos I have never seen before on flickr.com. These belong to – guess who – Dire Straits’ bass player John Illsley. He has his own photo channel there. Check out! John Illsley’s photo stream Update: I meanwhile also found a comment from John about these pictures on his great looking site at johnillsely.com: Dire Staits in 1978 ————————————- Thanks to Henk for […]
Have you ever wondered why Mark Knopfler’s Gibson Les Pauls (he has a ’58, a ’59, and some replicas of late 50ies models) differ so much in their colour? And what is the colour called, simply sunburst, or is it cherry sunburst, or tobacco sunburst? Have you ever heard the term ‘unburst’? The answer is simple: all those Les Paul Standards from that era (they were only built in this […]
I have been using the great Shubb capo for some years now. I love it because it is not only easy to use, but it also allows you to set the tension on the strings very precisely so that you have hardly any problems with detuning. Of course it is available for curved or flat fingerboards. However, until recently I have not been aware that there is also a special […]
A lot of people wonder how to adjust all the controls on the guitar amp or on effect devices to recreate the sound of song xy. Such questions are common in guitar forums all over the internet. Of course it is almost impossible to say which setting someone needs to recreate an authentic sound with his individual gear. Besides, even if you use exactly the same kind of setup with […]