Month: October 2009

Guitar in general

The Tai Chi of guitar playing

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Recently my son started to practice Tai Chi – an internal Chinese martial art that is often practiced for health reasons. Tai Chi is originally a sophisticated martial art in which you learn to control and relax your mind and your body and to win over the hard with softness this way. It is not really about fighting these days but rather about practicing ultimate principles that enable you to reach a certain state of body and mind in which you can do unbelievable things, fighting is just one of these. I find that applying the very same techniques and principles to guitar playing makes a lot of sense. Maybe it is not ideal for all music styles but surely for the Mark Knopfler style. […]

Recording

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

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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 […]

Effects

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

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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 […]