The Mark Knopfler Songbook — Featured on MK's official YouTube channel

[quizzaciously]

When learning Mark’s songs, for me, this process has two types of outcomes: either it’s really hard to play, but probably played that way (like in the recently covered “Don’t You Get It” or “Sucker Row”), or it’s too hard or impossible to play, so it probably should be played differently. That happened to me in “Angel Of Mercy”, where I figured it must be Open G because it’s too hard to play in standard tuning. And once I got a thought like this, the song played itself. And what a happy song! And what a solo! Pavel.

[primi]

Oh, OK, that's new! 
12 string? Maybe, possibly I can hear something but I'm really trying to find excuses to be honest. Never in a million years I'd go "Aha!" except perhaps, now that you've mentioned it, during his solo there just might perhaps be something there, maybe!

I'll go listen to it for the 12th time tonight now.... 

[quizzaciously]

Oh, OK, that's new! 
12 string? Maybe, possibly I can hear something but I'm really trying to find excuses to be honest. Never in a million years I'd go "Aha!" except perhaps, now that you've mentioned it, during his solo there just might perhaps be something there, maybe!

I'll go listen to it for the 12th time tonight now.... 

Well, I think the 12-string on "Angel Of Mercy" is a well-established fact. Apart from all the resources stating it (MK-Guitar, oneverybootleg), it's just obvious when you hear the song. You can't possibly mistake this sound for another, save for 2 guitars with standard and Nashville tuning. And it's actually quite astonishing that Mark can go to such lengths to serve a song. Take a 12-string, tune it in a weird tuning, compose a brilliant solo for it, and use it only once in a set or whatever, and nobody will think something strange has happened. The ultimate "serving a song" scenario.

And the solo actually sounds dull in standard tuning, so no wonder Mark wanted to spice it up a little. It sounds just fantastic on a 12-string!

[JF]

and in 1979, he played it live with a bottleneck on the 12 string burn baldwin !

[primi]

That's why I need you guys to point out the obvious when it's not obvious to me. 

[quizzaciously]

That's why I need you guys to point out the obvious when it's not obvious to me. 

You're welcome. It's all relative, though. I make a truckload of mistakes in everything I do, sometimes I get stuck transcribing seemingly "obvious" things, so nothing's really obvious in the world of music. If it's not a perfectly recorded single instrument with a video, mistakes will happen. Let alone when you have a tightly recorded track from the 70s with multiple guitar parts, barely any or no live recordings, no recording testimony and certainly no videos.

[quizzaciously]

The song for today is "When It Comes To You" from Dire Straits' final album. Keeping the Open G tuning vibe from the previous video, I tried to break down my approach to playing this little obscured/underrated bluesy tune. As I said in a live stream, if I would hear this song on my search for new songs, it would go to my collection 10 seconds in. Pavel.

[quizzaciously]

My YouTube shorts are all about spontaneous ideas, and here's one of them: quick transcribing and recording of the solo from the song "Prairie Wedding" from Mark Knopfler's "Sailing To Philadelphia" record. Just recorded this on my laptop after transcribing. I'm aware there are multiple ways to play that solo, this way works for my guitar. The lesson for the song is in the pipeline! As always, an amazing song from MK. What a master. Pavel.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zeJ_CXrg9y4

[quizzaciously]

Here's a little glimpse of my work process on learning the songs, and it includes diving into history, digging up archives, gathering information, and most importantly — trusting the ear. Because if it doesn't sound good, then it's most certainly not the way it was played. Also, if you thought I only work on Mark Knopfler's songs, that's not true. I'm able to work on Mark Knopfler's songs because I dissected and played hundreds of songs like this in the video. Pavel.

[primi]

I'm going live tomorrow at approx. 09:00 p.m. GMT. I'll answer your questions about the studio version of Sultans Of Swing by Dire Straits, questions about my version of the guitar part from this song, and give an update on my plans, life, and music teaching work which I finally started doing. Pavel.

P.S. Today is the 15th anniversary of my YouTube channel. I registered there quite early but never uploaded regularly until the end of 2016, so technically it’s only 6 years old.

On the twiddly bits in Sultans, here's a short Michael Britt comment about it that I recently found by accident.

https://youtu.be/JEzvCCbwYj8?t=1164

[quizzaciously]

I'm going live tomorrow at approx. 09:00 p.m. GMT. I'll answer your questions about the studio version of Sultans Of Swing by Dire Straits, questions about my version of the guitar part from this song, and give an update on my plans, life, and music teaching work which I finally started doing. Pavel.

P.S. Today is the 15th anniversary of my YouTube channel. I registered there quite early but never uploaded regularly until the end of 2016, so technically it’s only 6 years old.

On the twiddly bits in Sultans, here's a short Michael Britt comment about it that I recently found by accident.

https://youtu.be/JEzvCCbwYj8?t=1164

Thank you for bringing some activity into this thread which seems to be filled exclusively with my own posts

Right now I'm teaching people online in private lessons and you simply can't imagine the amount of aha's and wow's my fellow guitar players get in discovering all the little details and hidden gems in Mark's playing. I will never get tired of revealing, learning, or relearning them. And I'm learning all the time! And NOTHING is obvious.

Speaking of twiddly bits, it's quite interesting that people assume it's a "triplet thing" when in reality it's just four 16th notes, no triplets. The fact that it has a pull-off in the beginning forces you to pick only three notes and hence everybody assumes it's a triplet, I guess. So it is a triplet, but not a proper one.

I think Michael thought the right-hand picking went something like this: middle - pull-off - thumb - index. Or index - pull-off - thumb - middle. Which is remarkably awkward to play, and can only be done with three fingers. And if you try to do it with just two fingers, it's straight-up impossible to play starting with an upstroke, so he definitely overthought this a bunch. Because it forces one to play two notes in a row with one finger, either thumb or index, which is too hard to execute, too slow and takes up too much energy.

Mark's approach to playing twiddly bits is in fact the most economic, effortless, rational, logical, beautiful, and consistent way to do it, can't even compare with playing it with a pick. But after all, he came up with it.

[quizzaciously]

A quick live stream on the song "Prairie Wedding" from Mark's "Sailing To Philadelphia" album. It's a beautiful and reasonably simple song, I can easily imagine somebody trying it out. Don't forget to count all those bars properly! Pavel.

[JF]

A quick live stream on the song "Prairie Wedding" from Mark's "Sailing To Philadelphia" album. It's a beautiful and reasonably simple song, I can easily imagine somebody trying it out. Don't forget to count all those bars properly! Pavel.

I prefer the studio version that the live ones, regarding both tone and playing

in concert, he turned the solo too much "major scale" feeling for my taste. I find that the studio version has a more "atmospheric" flavour, and I like it

my firend Denys who recently passed away illustrated the song with this drawing :

[JF]

I give "music history" lessons in a school, and in january we talked about Morricone's Once upon a time the west soundtrack, and also about MK.
A student said to me he thought that Prairie Wedding was based on the Leone's movie story : Jill arrives at the train station, and she wrote a letter to Brett before., but the difference is that they were already married.
I had never thought to that before. And I don't think it's that much connected.
But I said to the student that DS song Once upon a time in the west has some clues bout the film : "Even the hero gets a bullet in the chest"

[quizzaciously]

I give "music history" lessons in a school, and in january we talked about Morricone's Once upon a time the west soundtrack, and also about MK.
A student said to me he thought that Prairie Wedding was based on the Leone's movie story : Jill arrives at the train station, and she wrote a letter to Brett before., but the difference is that they were already married.
I had never thought to that before. And I don't think it's that much connected.
But I said to the student that DS song Once upon a time in the west has some clues bout the film : "Even the hero gets a bullet in the chest"

Great analysis and drawing! Kudos to your late friend. This is something I miss in my videos, a lack of information about the song's lyrics and connections. I'm happy focusing on music alone though.