This instrumental guitar performance was inspired by the Dire Straits song Lady Writer (from the Communiqué album). However, it is not a cover, nor is it a different solo over the same backing track. Instead I followed the chord progression of Lady Writer but created a backing track with a different tempo and a different rhythm, something more like Single Handed Sailor (from the same album). I played the solo […]
My friend Thomas Schwarze is a nature photographer. You can find his great photos on his Instagram page. I had two recordings of some instrumental music, featuring Stratocaster sounds, one more in the Knopfler-style, the other one is a bit Pink-Floyd-ish. So I made a slide show with some of Thomas’ photos, and put these over my music for a Youtube video. Here are the results, I hope you like […]
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 my last two videos I got some nice guitar sounds out of the integrated amp simulation and effects of my Soundcraft UI24R mixing desk. I was playing the MK61 pickups in the bridge & middle position of my Strat. This week I tried the same with the neck pickup. This is a VFS-1 pickup. I also worked much more with my ‘virtual studio’ (Steinberg Cubase together with the Soundcraft […]
Chris Rea is an artist that has surely more than a few things in common with Mark Knopfler – playing a red Fender Stratocaster is one of them. Chris plays a lot of slide guitar, so his Strat is normally tuned to open E, and his sound is different for this reason but often his clean Strat sounds are still similar to some early Dire Straits stuff. I found this […]
You probably know the discussion started by John Suhr about the originality of Mark Knopfler red Dire Straits Stratocaster (the one with the maple neck, not the 1961 Strat with the rosewood fingerboard). John Suhr worked on Mark’s guitars in the early 80ies and stated that this guitar was not an original vintage Fender but a ‘fake’, probably a Japanese copy. I always used to be a bit uncertain what […]
The deluxe box set of Mark’s new Tracker album features a short film by the Danish director Henrik Hansen. It is already available on Youtube: I think it is a nice film which shows Mark at work, developing songs for the new record, and at leisure, walking his dogs. I am sure you will enjoy the film very much. With this blog post, I want to discuss a few guitar […]
For better hum shielding, the strings on electric guitars are normally grounded, which means they are connected internally to the ground of the guitar. For this purpose, usually a ground wire is connected somewhere to the guitar bridge, in the case of a Stratocaster with tremolo this is normally a wire from the case of the volume pot to the ‘claw’ that helds the tremolo springs. As the springs are […]
When browsing Adrian Boot’s Dire Straits photos, I found one from early 1980 that allowed a very rare view on Mark’s 1961 “Sultans” Stratocaster: a view on the back of the guitar. As the tremolo cover plate is missing on this guitar – back then and still today – we can see the inside of the tremolo cavity. From some other pictures or video stills, I already got the vague […]
Some weeks ago I visited a local music shop – the Music Store in Cologne – who have a dedicated custom shop showroom. Lots of custom shop Fenders, expensive Les Pauls, and other fancy stuff. In the upper right corner of their wall full of guitars I immediately spotted a red Strat that looked nice – can’t help but red guitar always seem to attract my eyes quicker than any […]