After a while, like everyone participating to this comp I suppose, I listened to other entrants and was really impressed by several ones. There are very good guitarists out there and that was so enriching!

And then, on the 6th September, I read congratulation messages posted on my page. I was one of the 5 finalists… My heart started to beat louder and louder! I was thrilled by the idea of being listened to by Mark Knopfler! When my brain finally accepted this idea several days later, I received a mail from John, a co-founder of PureSolo, that I was the winner of that amazing comp!! What is there say? Unbelievable!

The D-day was approaching and I had difficulty trying not to get too excited! How can you prepare yourself for such a meeting? I decided to take it easy and try not to create too much pressure on myself.

8.30am arrived on the given day, half an hour before the lesson. My head was empty and I floated on the pavement like in a dream. We were standing in front of this beautiful red house. You can’t imagine there’s one of the best studios in the world inside if you don’t know the place. We entered the building and were shown to a large windowed room with a huge table and lots of chairs around. On one of the walls there was a painting titled “Four Lambrettas and Three Portraits of Janet Churchman” by John Bratby, the one used on the cover of “Kill To Get Crimson” album. Two chairs were facing each other on a Persian carpet with guitars on their stands waiting for us. Surrounding one of the chairs, there was a MK signature strat plugged in an old vibrolux Fender amp, and a MK signature Martin. Another Martin was waiting on its stand close to the chair that I supposed would be mine in a few minutes!

9.00am and Mark entered the room, smiling as he stepped over to greet us, and congratulated me after being introduced. We talked a little bit together before sitting on our chairs and taking our guitars. He really made me feel immediately at ease. He firstly asked me to play a G chord, that I did all along the fret board. After awhile, he asked me to play something starting with a G. I improvised a few folk rhythms and arpeggios. He showed me how to sound good using Chet Atkin’s finger picking style, using your thumb alternatively on the 3 lower strings to play the 4 beats. Then Mark gave me the history of rock music, back from the old blues men releasing songs in the first part of the last century. He gave me names of famous blues musicians and explained what each of them brought to music, playing licks and rhythm parts at the same time. Blind Lemon Jefferson, Sonny Boy Williamson, Son House, Blind Willie McTell and Blind Blake with his piano-rag style who used rolls with his thumb. All the time explaining how guitar playing became more complex and sophisticated.

He told me listening to those great guitarists is the first thing to do to develop your own style. This means not just listening to their songs one at a time, but really to explore their guitar playing and feel their approach to music. After this, we took our electric guitars and we worked on vibratos, finger by finger and on one string, then several ones at the same time. He showed me a few licks I tried to imitate to gain fluidity in my playing.

He told me that it’s very important to keep on playing acoustic guitar, because it’s more difficult to play acoustic well. Then it’s far easier to take your electric guitar afterwards and play your stuff! Using a plectrum is also very important to practice, because there are times where you need to use one, as the sound is different and that’s the best amplifier ever. All too quickly the lesson was over and Mark had to leave. I learnt more in one hour with Mark than in 20 years of guitar playing!

After the lesson, we were invited to visit the whole studio with the manager, David Steward, who participated in the technical design of British Grove Studio. We then spent the next hour and a half working out way through a real music museum. In fact, it has two studios that are really well designed and every detail was thought of. For example, the main recording room in studio 1 is made of a central area surrounded by several little rooms. As the walls are configurable, you can open the space to have a huge room, or to partially open them to create isolated recording rooms. Flaps high on the walls can also be extended to modify the sound. As we talked, we could appreciate the comfortable acoustic quality of the place.

Very old machines can also be connected to brand new systems, enabling lots of different possibilities of recording. This is paradise for a musician! Everywhere you look, there’s a great machine, sometimes full of history. There’s an old mixing tube desk used by the Beatles in the 60’s, a custom-made Neve console and a API Legacy to name a few. It’s incredible to see all this first hand! The control rooms are really large compared to most of other studios and are equipped in a 5.1 configuration with wonderful ATC monitors which can be positioned where you want as they are placed on an ingenious rail device. We also talked a little bit about the amazing cooling system. The problem is that the air becomes dry, so they developed a technology to control humidity in order to have the perfect air quality to preserve the machines, instruments and of course, the musicians spending hours and hours in the studio!

There’s so much to say about that morning, and I feel really lucky to have had this unique opportunity. After so many years listening to Mark’s music, I had thousands of questions to ask, and in the end, I realised I asked none of them, as I was so captivated by what was happening and his incredible power of story telling! Now I want to concentrate on rearranging and recording my own songs using all I learnt during that enriching hour!

I’d like to thank all the people who welcomed me at the studio and the PureSolo team. Also, thank you to all the people who posted nice messages during and after the results of this comp, and of course, thank you to Mark Knopfler!!!