Chords for Mark Knopfler - On Tomorrow's World, BBC1, UK, April 1993

[A] _ _ _ _ _ [Am] _ _ [A] _
_ _ _ [E] _ _ [B] _ _ _
_ [Em] _ [B] _ _ _ [G] _ _ [D] _
[G] I'll stop again at that bit.
This is [Ab] _ _ [G]
[Bb] where [G] _ guitar careers often begin and end.
In the bedroom.
The guitar I know is really awkward to learn because it's difficult to find exactly the
notes you want among all the frets.
It usually takes an awful lot of painful hunting around.
But my guitar here just could help me.
Have a look at that.
Very pretty, but also very useful.
All these dots are light emitting diodes which are embedded into the neck.
And they show you where to put your fingers to play a note.
And programmed into here is every scale, chord and note a budding guitarist ever needs to know.
If I want to see where a note is, I just select a note down here.
And then my scale, that's on A flat, will go to B.
And then anywhere on the neck I can
find out where the B's are.
_ _ _ _ And it doesn't stop at that because amongst the 12 different types of scale programmed
into here, there's a blues scale.
Blues scale is often used in blues of course and rock and roll.
And so now if I dial that in, and I'm in the right key, so playing any one of these patterns
here should help me sound a lot closer to Mark Knopfler's finest fretwork.
Let's have another go at it.
[B] Let's listen.
_ [G] _ _ [D] _ _ [B] _
[Bm] _ _ [D] _ [B] _ _ [D] _ _ [G] _
_ Yeah, well it's sort of there.
The right notes appeared.
But what really matters is putting them together in the right order.
I suppose Mark Knopfler would be very impressed.
Would you Mark?
Well, I've seen a lot worse.
How did it sound?
Well, mine goes up and down.
It's not just down all the way.
[D] _ [G] Ah, [D] _ [G] brilliant.
But of course you can always get it right because you wrote it.
Come over here if you would.
You've been playing around with this new piece of technology.
What do you think of it as a way to teach someone how to play the guitar?
Well, I'm suspicious of _ appliances.
I have problems with things with lights that flash.
I've got a toothbrush that's got one light.
I'm getting to like that so I might get to get into this.
How do you use this then?
Well, you just [Bb] simply [G] dial in whatever it is that you need.
We've got different scales and different chords, any chord that you like.
If you take, this is really how I learned to play,
is just playing the same shapes.
I mean, these are from that last song.
That's really how I learned to go falling asleep playing.
[D] _ _ _ [Em] _ [D] _ [C] I mean, your fingers are basically going, you start very slow of course.
That's how I learned to do it, [Abm] just falling asleep
and ending up on the floor really with a guitar on top of me.
It also does chords as well, doesn't it?
Yeah, I mean, you just take the chord,
you just switch it from scales to chords there.
Choose a chord, any chord.
There's A and then it all lights up just like magic.
I'll put it on a major scale.
Right, there we are.
So these three little lights down here,
I mean, it does tell you where to put your fingers,
but there we've [A] got an A there.
And then there's one waiting for us up here.
And you just cover him up and it sounds pretty much the same.
And then up here it's exactly the same thing again.
Waiting for us, another one up here and so on and so forth.
Why is it important though to be able to get the same sound
from different parts of the neck?
Well, I found when playing in trios and things early on,
you have to play lead bits and the accompanying bits.
It really helps to be able to, otherwise you're belting up and down,
you're getting cramp and it all ends very sadly.
So if you're working at one end up here, you don't want to have to_
Right, just to be able to play the same lick here,
you know, to be able to play [Am] it.
So _ _ _ [D] [G] you just play the same thing pretty much,
but in different positions.
It is important.
Who do you think might find this most useful?
It's quite expensive.
Well, it wouldn't be for me because I'm not really a join-the-dots player,
but I think music schools, it's got a real future in music schools
because you don't really need a chord book.
Right.
I mean, except that chord books do tell you which fingers to use,
but the guitar teachers would do that.
And I think for serious jazzers and people like that,
I mean, look at these scales here.
You've got Mixolydian, Dorian, Locrian, Phrygian.
So I think for all the Phrygian freaks, it's a real_
It's a real find.
Bewildering stuff.
Mark, would you like to play something for us of your own taste
and you can have the lights on or off?
If all the lights are on, I just start to cry
and then I can't see my chords through my tears.
So I think the best thing to do would really be to turn it off.
And then I just_
The noodling sort of stuff really is just
what I fall asleep [A] doing, you know, just until I end up on the floor.
It [A] _ _ _ _ _ [Am] _
is_
[A] _ _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ _
[D] _ _ [A] _ _ [D] [N] Mark, any chance of me having an audition for the band?
Any chance of having an audition for the band?
No. _