{"id":670621,"date":"2026-10-31T06:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T06:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/670621\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T06:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T06:48:10","slug":"mark-knopfler-tells-why-hes-ditched-his-pick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/670621\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Knopfler tells why he\u2019s ditched his pick"},"content":{"rendered":"

electric guitar<\/a> fingerstylists in the game<\/a>. In recent years, though, Knopfler says, his playing has moved even more in the fingerstyle direction.<\/p>\n

Though he still has reverence for the guitar pick<\/a>, the Dire Straits man says that his move toward fingerstyle has been one of the byproducts of his overall shift in technique in the 2020s.<\/p>\n

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Speaking to Guitar Player in a 2024 interview<\/a>, Knopfler revealed that he’s \u201cstarted using more and more fingerpicking and less and less plectruming.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think lack of use, plus three bouts of COVID, probably phased out the plectrum for me. I just kept losing them and would be fingerpicking more \u2014 not necessarily fingerpicking better, just more. And it proved to be just a bit more comfortable for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

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That said, Knopfler \u2014 self-effacing throughout his discussion with GP \u2014 is on no high horse about his fondness for fingerpicking, even saying that using a pick is inherently better.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI want to bow to the plectrum and say it\u2019s a superior thing,\u201d Knopfler said. \u201cIt\u2019s louder. It\u2019s faster. It\u2019s got a better signal. It\u2019s the best amplifier<\/a> there is. I didn\u2019t give it up until recently. I was capable of playing things with a plectrum quite a lot, and I would do all the rhythm parts with one all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in his chat with GP, Knopfler \u2014 to an arguably ridiculous extent \u2014 went in further on what he sees as the deficiencies as his playing, saying that his \u201cgrip on the guitar has gotten even worse.<\/p>\n

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\u201c[His] songwriting \u2014 it takes you away from concentrating on playing, and it accentuates the simplicity of a lot of my stuff that I want out of the guitar,\u201d the guitarist said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve almost become a sort of a half-player in the sense that I only tend to play half the notes that are there that I could play, and my fingering is all wrong. I don\u2019t hold the neck properly; I hold the neck like a plumber holds a hammer, not in a proper, artistic way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Mark Knopfler has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":670622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-670621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/670622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}