A Quote by Mark Knopfler

The music you make is shaped by what you play it on ... if you feel that you're not getting enough out of a song, change the instrument - go from an acoustic to an electric or vice versa, or try an open tuning ... do something to shake it up.
If you feel that you're not getting enough out of a song, change the instrument - go from an acoustic to an electric or vice versa, or try an open tuning. Do something to shake it up.
One thing I really hate about people who play both acoustic and electric is if they try to play electric style on an acoustic guitar. You must develop it as a totally different thing.
I'm glad I can do both full-band electric and solo acoustic performances. It's nice to have contrast, so if you get fed up with one, you can just switch to the other one. It's great to go to a town and play an acoustic show, and then you can come back a year later and play electric, and the show's really fairly different. The repertoire will be 50 percent different. The musical energy is completely different.
I've always liked the electric guitar better. Even though the acoustic can be a very sexy and mysterious instrument, I can go to way more places with an electric.
I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then, "Nowhere Man" came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down...Song writing is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed sleep.
I play acoustic when I need to play acoustic, and I say I'm probably a better acoustic player than I am electric.
There are a lot of cases where I'm using, if not an acoustic guitar, an electric guitar more as a rhythm instrument. Rather than blasting away, I use it to create more of an acoustic feel.
I feel like I've gotten to the point where when I get tired of making art I can make a smooth transition into making music and vice versa. There is always something to do.
Obviously there is stuff that I wouldn't play in a club that I play at festivals, and vice-versa, but my sets are still dominated largely by my own music. I think that's what makes me stand out a bit. My music is also festival- and club-friendly, so it generally works out well.
Just because you have developed the craft on your instrument doesn't mean that you don't have the ability to be expressive emotionally on that instrument, or vice versa.
The first instrument I had was made in the late '70s. Back then they had basically one tuning. I shifted slightly away from that tuning right away (to what is now called the Baritone Melody Tuning), because I wanted more string overlap between the two sides.The instrument I currently play has an active pickup system, Fret Rails, a fully adjustible bridge, adjustible truss, Flaps adjustible nut. Even with all of these advances, I'm always struck when I play the older instrument how good they were even then. Emmett's always been great at implementing his ideas.
No other acoustic instrument can match the piano's expressive range, and no electric instrument can match its mystery.
I sit around and play acoustic guitar - usually acoustic, sometimes electric, occasionally piano, but more often guitar, just trying to come up with tunes. Ideas kind of pop into your head.
Technology was something I avoided when I started out - I didn't even have electric guitars. Only played acoustic. But after a while, I realized that it's important to embrace things that are available in your time, and try to do something different with them.
When I was a teenager, I really didn't like loud rock music. I listened to jazz and blues and folk music. I've always preferred acoustic music. And it was only, I suppose, by the time Jethro Tull was getting underway that we did let the music begin to have a harder edge, in particular with the electric guitar being alongside the flute.
The first thing you realise very quickly when you decide to do an acoustic version of an electric song is your solo either becomes either very truncated, very different, or non-existent, because even if you play a clean solo, it's different with the Kryptonite... with the acoustic.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!