I made another video some weeks ago where I talked about doubling guitar riffs for a fatter sound. I played a Japanese Erlewine Automatic, a very cool guitar with one humbucker, and dialed in a sound similar to the Dire Straits classic Money for Nothing. I did not try to get as close as possible to the original sound which is very much a typical 80ies sound, bright with some […]
Here is a video I made to demonstrate the use and the different sound effect of different ‘doubling techniques’. Doubling is nothing too fancy or secret but a common studio recording technique. Still it might be interesting not only for beginners as each of the different approaches leads to different results which are compared in ths video. To judge the stereo effect it is best to listen to the sounds […]
This time I am checking two great guitars, a Suhr MK-1 and a Pensa MK-1. The Suhr is the one that you could already see in this video. Both belong to the same person, a collector from Germany. Some background on the first MK1 The Pensa-Suhr MK1 was built in 1988 by luthier John Suhr at Rudy Pensa’s guitar shop in Manhattan. Suhr worked there before he built amps with […]
The new Guitar Hero Warriors of Rock features Dire Straits – Money for Nothing from the Brothers In Arms CD (1985). We had a lot of fun and many valuable insights with Sultans of Swing from this game some months ago. This one is also a great listen for all of us MK-style guitar players since hearing the guitar(s) alone lets you hear so many details that are lost behind […]
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 […]
In Guy Fletcher’s last recording diary he had a photo of Mark Knopfler’s old Marshall amp with the matching cabinet. This seems to be the same amp that was used on the original recording of both Money for Nothing and Brothers in Arms. Marshall’s first amps were basically copies of the tweed Fender Bassman. They had the same circuit and consequently the same controls, although they looked completely different. The […]
This time I will start with some very basic stuff: major and minor chords. Every guitar beginner soon learns that there is e.g. an A major chord, and an A minor chord. Obviously they are similar, they just differ in one single note (in case of the first position chords, in the example it is either the 2nd (A) or 1st (Am) fret on the b string). You need to […]