Recording

Recording acoustic guitar with two microphones – Audio Technica AT 4050 and Schoeps CM 64

I recently recorded an acoustic guitar for a cover version of Brothers in Arms. I used two different microphones – a large diaphragm condensor  Audio Technica AT 4050 near the bridge and a small diaphragm condenser Schoeps CM 64 over the neck. I had seen pictures showing Mark using a similar approach from a radio promo recording he did a few years back.

I recorded both mics to separate channels of a stereo track into Cubase. When hearing the result I was pleased with the broad stereo sound and left it as it was. Of course you can mix both sources with different panning and volumes to be much more versatile.

I made a sound file for you for demonstration, you can hear the mix of both microphones but also both individually (in the mix and alone) to judge about their different sound capabilities. The old (1962) Schoeps is a great mic. It has a tube circuit and a nice treble boost for that warm and crisp high end. Of course there are many other great ways to position two microphones, this being just one.

The guitar is a 1976 Gibson MK 81 by the way. It will be featured in a future article.

Effects, Guitar in general, Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear

The Synclavier – The guitar sound of Dire Straits So far away

I recently saw a few threads in numerous forums about the guitar sound of So far away on Dire Straits’ fifth album, Brothers in Arms. People speculated that there was a flanger, a delay, a chorus, or other effects involved to create the rather unusual sound of the lead guitar.

And unusual it is in fact. This is because it is not really a guitar what you hear – instead it is the Synclavier by NED – a synthesizer – that is triggered by a special controler guitar.

The Synclaviar

I don’t want to go into too many details about the Snclavier since there are enough articles in the web about it, including this Wikipedia article. In short, it was a very complex – and thus expensive – system that was similar to the Fairchild synth. Due to the high price – I heard Knopfler payed something like 300,000 $ US in the mid-eighties for his Synclavier – both systems were mainly used in big studios or among top-selling artists. The Synclavier was not only a synthesizer – which means a device that generates sounds combining basic waveforms – but also one of the first high-quality samplers – a device that generates sounds from recorded (=sampled) waveforms of real instruments or real sounds or noises.

It was one of the first high-end workstations that allowed you to produce an entire album with almost nothing else. No wonder that it was used on some of Mark Knopfler’s soundtracks in the 80ies, like Princess Bride or Last Exit to Broklyn. I remember reading that even one of the guitars on Princess Bride was sampled (most guitars here were really played of course).

Synclavier II from the mid eighties
Synclavier II from the mid eighties

The Pensa controller guitar

To trigger the sounds from a synth with a guitar you need a special guitar – one that sends MIDI commands or some other similar electric signals. For this purpose Mark Knopfler had a special guitar build by Rudy Pensa’s Music Stop. It had a Stratocaster shape and lots of switches and knobs. As it also had two conventional pick-ups, you could play it as normal guitar, or blend the guitar sound with the synth sounds.

Here are some pictures showing this guitar. I have no idea what this guitar was used for on the concerts these were taken from, at least to my knowledge it was never used live for So Far Away which was played on the red Schecter Strat on stage in 1985.

Mark Knopfler with Bob Dylan who was a guest on the Brothers in ARms tour in Australia, 1986
Mark Knopfler with Bob Dylan who was a guest on the Brothers in Arms tour in Australia, 1986

synthguitar 003a
synthguitar 004

And finally the official video of So far away:

Dire Straits/ Mark Knopfler live pictures and videos, Mark Knopfler gear, Misc

Dire Straits 1979 concert photos from Liverpool and Birmingham by Alan Perry

Those early years of Dire Straits are still a very special period for me. 1979 was the time when I first heard the band and became a fan of Knopfler’s guitar style and sound. For this reason I still have a deep interest in any live pictures from this time but more and more I got the impression that I meanwhile have seen most existing pictures from those early years. What a surprise when I found Alan Perry’s website. Alan Perry has been a professional concert photographer since 1975 and you can order all his pictures on his site. There are little preview pictures of all his photos. And he took pictures on two different Dire Straits concerts – from the Empire, Liverpool, June 8, 1979 and the Odeon, Birmingham, June 13, 1979. All in all more than 50 pics of each concert.

Prices seemed reasonable to me – 30 British pence for a standard size photo- so I simply ordered all of them. The quality of the pictures is great. Of course there are always some that are better than others but all in all they all look good.

Unfortunately I could not spot any exciting new details about Knopfler’s equipment yet – no new insight into the effects he used, no picture that revealed details like the amp setting.

Knopfler played his red Fender maple board Stratocaster with the greenish pickguard of his other Strat (see here for more info), the black Thinline Telecaster on Water of Love (more info), and David’s black Strat on Setting me up (more info). The guitars went through the Morley volume pedal (more info) and the MXR analog delay into two Music Man amps (more info).

Here are a few samples. Check them out all at Alan’s site (www.concertphotos.uk.com): Birmingham 1979 Liverpool 1979

MK guitar style and licks

Sultans of Swing solo

Last weekend we had guests and one of them had this new photo camera – a Panasonic Lumix FX 37 which costs less than 200,- €. Besides taking great photos you can also record videos in HD quality (1280 x 720 pixels). As I was curious what these look like with my stuff I played Sultans for them and we filmed it. The result is really amazing – much better than that old camcorder I normally use – and this from a small, pocket size camera.

I wanted to check what it looks like on youtube so I uploaded a part of the final Sultans of Swing solo. The audio is of course also recorded with the camera itself (I recorded audio on a special track for the Six Blade Knife cover I did a few days ago).

A few notes on what I am playing here

It is just a mixture of different licks from different live versions plus some improvisation here and there. I played some of those staccato things from the Alchemy version  at 0:30  – although it seems noone knows for sure how Knopfler did that exactly. The lick at 0:40 might be similar to one from Wembley 1985, I always liked this one. I am not sure myself about the next one at 0:43 – it was suddenly in my head one day, not sure if I heard it from Knopfler somewhere or not.

The next lick (0:46) is from one of the 1996 versions if I remember correctly.

I messed up the part around 0:57 a bit, I never know when the backing track goes for that bass string lick (I need to build in a small drum fill to identify this part for me).

At 2:00 you will find another example of Knopfler’s 6 chord – a shape he uses quite a lot lately.

The backing track I used – the only one of the ‘long’ version with the piano part in the middle – is available here.

Easy stuff for beginners, MK guitar style and licks, Understanding music

Chord changes for ending of Romeo And Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is a song I have been playing on my National for many years, but I never tried to play the wonderful ending of recent live versions where the piano leads through a rather unusual chord sequence. Yesterday I played around with the piano a bit and had a look at this.

After the last verse Romeo and Juliet features a two-chord sequence over which Knopfler plays solo: Bb (or Bbmaj7) and C.

When the drum stops, this sequnce (Bb – C ) is repeated two more times. Next comes a sequence of five chords, the piano is the dominating instrument here:

Bb – Am – G – F (9) – E

Note that Romeo and Juliet is in the key of F, so you would expect a sequence that leads to an F chord. This one however completely ignores the key – the G and especially that last E do not belong here in any way. Thus it functions as a surprising change in the mood of the sound, highlighting the carefully constructed composition. Wonderful.

To hear what I am talking about, check the following youtube video, starting from 8:55 :

Guitars, Mark Knopfler gear, Misc, Recording, Vintage guitars

Installing a Highlander iP-1X – The best pick-up for the National resonator guitar

I have my National for some years now but never found the time, money, and courage to install a pick-up into this sensitive instrument. But a few weeks ago I decided to order what is said to be the best available pick-up for single cone Nationals: the iP-1X pick-up from Highlander – the same model that Mark Knopfler has in both his beautiful 1937 National and his new National.
I bought it new on ebay for USD 239 (169,- €), quite a lot of money for just a pick-up with an internal pre-amplifier, well, but a lot cheaper than the recommended retail price of USD 329.

What is always annoying here in Germany is that you have to pay not only customs (which in this case were only 2.7 %) but also 19% VAT, and this not only on the price of the item but also on the shipping costs (!?). You even have to pick-up the package from the local customs office.

In the box were the pick-up itself which is installed into a new biscuit (the piece of wood that holds the bridge) – so you have to exchange your old biscuit – the pre-amp which has to be installed in the interior of the guitar, a case for the external battery (replacing batteries inside of a National is no fun and puts stress on the cone construction), a guitar cable (stereo, one lead for the 9v battery power), and some velco tape to fix the cables inside the body of the guitar.

Highlander iP-1X

Installing the pick-up

Unfortunately this is a job that is not easily done, and does not take just a few minutes. The new biscuit with its bridge is much higher than the original one and has no grooves. It took me almost three hours to transfer the shape and height of the original bridge to a cardboard template, then to transfer it from the template to the new bridge, to cut it out roughly with a fret saw, to fine tune the contours with a file, and to saw the new grooves, again using the template. Of course I did this extremely carefully and slowly because I was afraid to cause some irreversible damage. Fortunateley the new bridge soon looked fine and was ready to install.

This picture shows the difference in height and shape of the bridges
This picture shows the difference in height and shape of the bridges. The old biscuit looks much cooler, doesn't it - but you don't see much of it when installed into the guitar.
I used such a cardboard template to transfer the bridge contour
I used such a cardboard template to transfer the bridge contour
The new biscuit after sawing
The new biscuit after sawing
From the installation description - you need to pierce a hole into the cone
From the installation description - you need to pierce a hole into the cone

Normally you would ask a good local luthier for this job, but (a) there was noone near who had experience with Nationals and this pick-up, and (b) I like to do all kind of jobs on my guitar myself anyway. An experienced repair man surely will get this job done much quicker than me.

The external case for the battery
The external case for the battery

One thing that worried me was the fact that you need to drill a small hole into the cone (!) for the cable from the pick-up to the pre-amp. Besides two tiny screw holes on the wood stick inside the body to hold the pre-amp, this is the only irreversible modification of your guitar. I was reluctant when I learned about this before I ordered the pick-up because the cone is extremely sensitive, and also in my opinion a major sound difference between a vintage instrument and a new National. The hole could be pierced with a small prick first, then carefully drilled to 2,5 mm (3/32 “).  After threading the pick-up cable through the hole, I had to solder the RCA connector to the cable that is plugged into the pre-amp.

The rest was easy: the pre-amp is held by 2 little screws, like Mark Knopfler I used the f-hole for the output jack (no drilling required), and fixed all internal cables with the velcro tape.

The sound

After restringing the instrument, I was extremely curious how it will sound. I went directly from the pre-amp into the mixing desk and played the guitar over my studio monitors. What should I say, the sound was …. wonderful, sounds as you hear it from Knopfler’s guitar on his live recordings. The output seems to be rather hot, and the pick-up delivers the full range from bass, middle, to treble end. It is so balanced that I even did not have to adjust any EQ, sounded fine as it was. After adding some reverb it was perfect. I also could not detect any sound difference with the acoustic sound. Even at high volume I did not get any feedback problems, great!

Now it was also time to add a strap button to the heel of the neck so that I could play the guitar when standing, something I did not need before. I did not produce any sound clips because it really sounds just like the recent Knopfler live recordings (he had different pick-ups installed in the past I think), listen to Romeo & Juliet on the roadrunning live CD for example.

I would give 5 stars for this product.

Guitar in general, Mark Knopfler gear, Misc, MK guitar style and licks, Recording

Cover version of Dire Straits Six Blade Knife

During the last weeks I played around a bit with the backing tracks from the Jam with Dire Straits book by Total Accuracy. Some of these are great and sound very good. Unfortunately, the  one for Sultans of Swing seems  almost unusuable to me because of the harsh rhythm guitar sound. Since I still had a Cubase file with the MIDI drum part of Sultans – something I did with a cover band I played with in the mid 90ies – I decided to revive it. It was  programmed for the Alesis SR 16 drum computer we had in those days, but now I used it with Battery, a VST instrument by Native Instruments.

The backing tracks

Battery allows you to load many different drum kits, and to replace drum sounds with your own samples. As I love the sound of the first Dire Straits album, I sampled the snare and a bass drum from this CD for that authentic drum sound. Since this was a lot of fun, I also made a backing track for Six Blade Knife. The drum part is very simple so this was not too much work. What I did to make it sound less sterile was to analyze the micro groove pattern of Six Blade Knife and tranfer it to the MIDI drum part (the Cubase experts will know what I am talking about).

Next I added the bass track and a rhythm guitar. The bass was an old Precision bass, while I used my blonde  ’70 Telecaster for rhythm. I admit I was lazy, so I played the guitar directly into the desk.

Both tracks are nice to jam with, especially since our little homerecording studio has a small PA now, no need for headphones all the time anymore. We even have a few LED lights now. The days of the old -fashioned halogen spots seems to be almost over. The new LED spots need only a fraction of the electric power, and you can mix every colour with the RGB LEDs of one single spot. I programmed some lighting scenes and triggered these from the Cubase arrangement. I used two digi cams for filming myself  jamming with the Six Blade Knife track.

The backing track is available here.

Guitar sound

It is basically a live recording, vocals and guitar played live and recorded with Cubase, no post editing. Except a bit EQ there is no post processing on the guitar, no compression, no effects. The reverb was from the Music Man amp, and delay was my green MXR analog delay. The signal chain is pretty much what Knopfler played during the Communique tour.

I used the Shure SM 57 for guitar, and for the vocals. It is basically a mic for guitar or snare drum, but for some odd reason I always liked it better for vocals then the Shure SM 58.

I play different licks here and there whenever I play one of these songs, most licks origin from some old live recordings, others are my own versions. I don’t think it makes much sense to copy a particular version of the song, but I tried to copy the overall feel.

The video

I never have done a two-camera video before, but this was really easy. I put the sound recording on one audio tracks and imported the video files on two different video tracks. After enabling the wave form display of the sound file and of the audio tracks of both video  tracks, I only had to adjust the video files so that the sound of all of them was in sync, then I switched off the sound of the video tracks. LED lights are not ideal for filming – at least not the affordable ones – so some colours do not look as good  on video as they did here, but all in all this was not a problem.

So, here is the final video. Let me know what you think of it here, or leave a rating or a comment directly at youtube (you get there directly when you click on the video while it is playing).

Misc

Mark Knopfler on facebook and myspace

In todays post I just want to direct your attention to the official Mark Knopfler facebook and myspace pages:

Mark Knopfler on facebook

Mark Knopfler on myspace

Both have been regularly updated during the last weeks. The facebook pages now feature some preview clips of Mark Knopfler’s new album Get Lucky (release scheduled for September 14), e.g. a video ad in which you can hear snippets from the songs Get Lucky, Border reiver, and Remembrance day, and you can listen to the full track Border reiver.

Guitar in general, Misc

Cover version of Setting me up by Albert Lee

Many Mark Knopfler fans like Eric Clapton and are familiar with his work. Especially his live album Just one Night from 1979 was a milestone in his career. It features a live version of Setting my up – a Mark Knopfler song from Dire Straits’ first CD. However, many do not realize that this cover version has not much to do with Eric Clapton. Instead this song was meant to feature Albert Lee who plays the second guitar on this tour. He had just recorded Setting me up in the studio for his solo album Hiding (1979). In a similar way Mark Knopfler played one of his songs –  Money for Nothing – when he went on tour with Clapton in the late 80ies.

The album Hiding was not available on CD until a few year ago when it was reissued. It is a well-produced album with about 20 laid-back country-rock songs,  something many Mark Knopfler fans will probably like.

ALBERT LEE
Albert Lee with his Telecaster

Albert Lee is a fantastic guitarist of course. He is one of the ultimate Telecaster players (although today he plays his Music Man signature model a lot). He perfected the pick-plus-two-fingers approach, a bit similar to Richard Thompson‘s picking technique.

Here is a short sample of this studio version of Setting me up by Albert Lee (from my vinyl):

 

You can buy the CD on Amazon, simply follow the link for your country (US, Germany, UK) below.

MK guitar style and licks, Understanding music

Mark Knopfler chord shape of Vic and Ray and for a lick in Money for Nothing live intro

In this article I will cover a little chord progression that Mark Knopfler apparently discovered some day and – as he sees himself mainly as a songwriter – directly translated into a song. He often learned such little patterns and licks by accident – finding something when playing for hours – or learned them from one of his mates, people like the great Chet Atkins, pedal-steel player Paul Franklin, or Richard Bennet.

Here is a little audio clip where Knopfler plays the particular riff I am going to talk about. Here he plays it in the key of G, one full note lower than in the Vic and Ray example below.

 

This pattern appears in the song Vic and Ray from Knopfler’s first solo album Golden Heart (1996). It starts with an A7 chord fragment, followed by a G chord with the B in the bass, and finally another A chord, with the C# in ths bass.

First as a tab:

vic and ray tab

Here as pictures, showing each of the three shapes you have to play in red:

Vic and Ray 2

VicandRay3

VicandRay4

Note that from shape one to two, one note (the g on the d-string) remains the same and can be sustained, and that the third shape is the same as the second, just two frets higher which means you simply need to slide two frets higher. Check out my video below for left hand fingering (I found there are two ways that work for me).

Adding a chromatic transition chord for Money for Nothing lick

It was only recently when I realized that the funny chromatic licks that Knopfler played at the beginning of Money for nothing in Nimes on the On Every Street tour (1992) make use of the same pattern, you only have to add another shape – the chord between shape two and three in the pictured above:

vicandray5

Then move it to the key of G (two frets lower), followed by the same pattern in C, next in D, and you have those chords for Money for nothing (see my video, at 5:10 it also contains a link that takes you directly to a clip showing Knopfler playing that thing in Money for Nothing).