Mark Knopfler on Guitars

you've got to really want to play because you thinkers don't want to do what they what they're told that's one of the first first chord I learned so downstrokes and I just did that and I did that I did that it's a good job nobody had to listen to it um and you just got to do that an awful lot a pic is actually biggest amplifier that there is then after a few years of doing that I learned to finger pick because I started playing folk places do you start doing this slow thumb and finger thing you start the dribbling about tryna [Music] trying to make sense of it the breakthrough really comes when you can get your thumb to play four beats to the bar on the bottom strings like this and then your fingers are supposed to fit in with that this is a clever trick if you can do it it's like learning to water-ski I'm up I'm up I'm down you know and uh but once you start to be able to pick a little tune out in a chord get get the rhythm going and you can just hold this record of the left hand like C chord there you can go which sounds quite a lot really it's kind of impressive considering the fact your left hands not doing anything it's just told in this chord and then the idea is that you can go on developing that and then maybe take out a little bit of a tune at the same time so you're accompanying yourself you know and so pretty soon you start to get quite rhythmic and gets so that you're playing a little bit more like a barrel house piano player or something and it's almost like a piano of the left hand and right I'm going all at once Anderson it's getting some rhythm to it [Music] you're taking up single notes and playing chords as well finger in summer starting to play the notes and you could do much better with a pick you can actually do it faster and louder with a pig but I'd just be doing this with my finger and thumb so everybody develops their own when playing if you play enough and fingering thumbs sort of falling over each other and you know I would write songs the way I write songs now most of the time just on an acoustic guitar but the first time I got a a Fender Stratocaster I was after I'd got highest-ranked going and it's my lust object as a child when I heard the sound of it and when I wrote something to swing for instance I've written it on an acoustic guitar and it was different you know the sound of the strings together and uh and the tonality of the guitar made it made me want to write another way this is them this is an old last pause so it's a 58 that everything seemed to come right about this time if you get to the end of a vocal and you've got nothing more to say but maybe the guitar has and it you wanted something maybe a richer sound then I'd probably use something like this so [Music] that thicket own no weather weather but Australia would be slightly different but it solves a swing or something like that you need a kind of a thinner sound because a lot of the time I'm playing them vibrate and save three strings at once and it's quite nice to have the little choir effect of the I'm trying to to make the things speak but so I wanted to play a little bit of rhythm so it's got a different is more of a gutbucket thing the Gibson had sort of double strength if you like pickups are called humbucking pickups and they enabled you to get a lot more power it would be more filth in the overdrive in the sound so be here when I saw Buddy waters playing in the with the band with his band I was struck by just how lowered level the thing was but just how the thing was levitating and grooving half the time it's not really to do with volume at all a lot of the great players didn't necessarily play so loud one of the reasons why the guitar is figured big and jazz is that you don't necessarily have to play so hard with your right hand a hammer everything at you can kind of you can kind of fake finger when you're playing quick things you're playing a lot of notes again an electric guitar can articulate those notes more easily than the acoustic and also it's very quick cordially it's actually very easy you can move between playing single notes and chords and little bits of chords and little drops and runs and all sorts of things you can bend and you can move notes a little bit you can play really complicated inversions and notes and sometimes you've been to strings at once [Music] and you know you're imitating other sounds that you might have might be imitating I use a little pedal to swell a note in like it's being bowed one or you can play chords you know you can do it cordially or you can do a little it's really flexible and endless fun for young and old in this case old normally when I be at home most of the time I'll play on an acoustic guitar because it's just such a beautiful friendly thing great instrument for a songwriter and just climbing it and it sound good [Music] it's a friend to you all your life once you've you know learned how to play a few chords that's all really all that you need most of the time when I'm at home I'm just playing real simple chords and writing my songs I'm really glad that I couldn't afford an amplifier that was really good for me because we're borrowing friends acoustics it took me into folk music I was writing a song like true love will never fade I'll be going [Music] and it would probably come from sitting with a flat top guitar like this this thing is more about finger picking this is a national steel guitar one day I was sitting there was playing around on this and came up with with Romeo and Juliet just because of the nature of the guitar [Applause] me you know I could probably play it on that that would sound okay but it wouldn't be quite wouldn't be quite the same as this delightfully vulgar piece of equipment it's got the lovers on the back in the canoe too and it's really really I always think I've always thought of these things that's been magical in a way you know because they had a little resonator it's like a speaker that's held down by the by the bridge and it funnily enough it actually it records really well it's penis actually made it on a lot of records that I've made this thing it tends to come out a little bit somewhere between a guitar and a piano [Music] and I always wanted to play steel ever since I heard it so I've got my my dear old dad and he got on his late I got him to make me a few of these pieces of tube so I could play it's what they call slide guitar you you you slide that the metal over the string [Music] [Music] if you hit you things hard they're loud [Music] it's just really good fun playing around cause it reminds me in the banjo sometimes when you learn your first chords and you're going [Music] that's a very basic huh that's your one chord music for good and your five chord [Music] the same chords in the being a blues [Music] it's the same chords you one chord and then the bit that the winning that would be that it'd be the same thing so it's the same it's really all the same music once once you start extemporizing on that it becomes jazz then then you can start adding putting little interval chords in and so it's the same chord and the same same 1 4 5 s or whatever but you're just putting more things in some of those great players of the work in a professionally they like when they get together they like to play that kind of thing it's not really my music that's not really something that I spend much time doing and I'm much more like likely myself to be doing this that's my say

Channel: Mark Knopfler Russia

Views: 13,371,463

Rating: 4.9155836 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: OG__SwkV3wg

Length: 14min 24sec (864 seconds)

Published: Wed May 03 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/roberoonska]

It's a shame he can only afford an old guitar.

[u/jamescalifornia]

Thanks for sharing this. I attentively watched this master sharing his guitar technique that generated some of the best popular music ever recorded.

[u/bigdaddyskidmarks]

At around 12:30 he starts talking blues adlibbing and he zones out and just plays instead of finishing his sentence. He’s totally gone for a few seconds. That’s what it’s all about.

[u/skjellyfetti]

Saw Dire Straits back in '86 and was blown away even though I had been listening to 'Live Alchemy' and kinda knew what to expect, it was still such an incredible and phenomenal show. Knopfler has always been a favorite and he's always been so low-key about his skill and artistry. I vaguely remember a 'Rolling Stone' interview with him back around '85 or so, and he mentioned that his goal is to get the guitar to speak. When asked what he can get the guitar to say, he remarked that he could get it to say 'hi' and that was about it. He even mentions the speaking guitar in this clip.

Interestingly, some of his best work has been with others. His work on Dylan's 'Infidels'—both producing and playing—is absolutely amazing along with the album he did with Chet Atkins, 'Neck and Neck'. En plus, his soundtrack work provides yet another avenue for him to explore his artistry.

[u/JacksonHammer]

The part of this video that I liked was how near the end he couldn't finish a sentence without letting his guitar finish it's part. You can tell he feels the music and must resolve it.

[u/f3nd3rb3nd3r]

I've always liked Knopfler. I know his voice turns some people off, but it seems like he genuinely enjoys what he does on a personal level.

[u/Notlandshark]

A true master of his instrument.

[u/theanonwonder]

That's was lovely to watch!

[u/the99thmonkey]

That kiss on the guitar, showing his love of the instrument was moving.