Guitar Quotes
Most Famous Guitar Quotes of All Time!
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I played guitar when I was young and never really considered it as a way to make a living.
When I picked up guitar, it wasn't like, 'OK, I'm going to be Kenny Chesney.' It was like, 'I want to play a chord,' and then it was like, 'I want to play another one, then play a song, then sing while playing the song.'
I've been singing my entire life. The guitar came to me later on down the road.
A cello can sound like so many instruments, but it's only one, you know, like a guitar; it has percussive qualities. It can sing like the violin, you know, like a voice.
The cello is such a versatile instrument. It can rock like the hardest rock guitar, and it can sing like the human voice. We couldn't do what we do without the classical training. It's a hard instrument to play. There are no frets, and it takes finesse and technique to play.
We tune differently, and we use some tricks. There's just the two of us for much of a concert, so we want a big sound. We do use some guitar effects, distortion and delay. Playing cello with distortion sounds so good.
I've been into music for a long time. I started playing drums when I was 8 and piano when I was 10, then bass and guitar when I was 18.
I definitely try to be myself and not try to imitate other performers. That's why I got my music degree. I wanted to be prepared and not be a 'product.' I want people to know that I'm not only a singer but a musician as well. I studied guitar, piano, and composition. I believe that it's just about being myself on and off stage.
Growing up, I was listening to a lot of Metallica, a lot of instrumental guitar music because I started out as a guitar player.
My mom is an elementary school music teacher, a pianist, and a singer, and my dad plays guitar - he's a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. My mom does musical theater, too. All of those influences were around.
From the very beginning, I had a lot of female role models in music. I would go to shows, and there were always women fronting bands and playing guitar or backing up and playing drums or bass in a band. That probably contributed to my belief in myself to go out and perform for people.
I took guitar a while back, and my heart wasn't in it at the time, but I'm ready to try it again. I sing in the car, at home - it's a huge part of my life, especially since I'm from Tennessee.
I'm not a big fan of guitar face: you know, when someone's playing guitar, and they make this really embarrassing face, like they smush their lips together and... they look you in the eye, and it's really humiliating.
I play, like, 12 instruments. Guitar, piano, harmonica, African drums... I'm working on mastering the accordion.
I think it gets boring (for the audience) for the lead singer to have a guitar hanging on them all the time.
Now they have banging guitar and no bass and call it rock, but that's not what I call rock.
Some people train for certain sports and I want to train to be able to hold a super heavy electric guitar and carry luggage around myself because I always have to have 7,000 pairs of shoes. Who cares about sports?
My mum had this idea I was going to be this long-haired hippie playing guitar and bought me one when I was 13, but my little brother picked it up instead and was such a natural, he kept it! Io Echo is a band my brother now plays in; they're really good.
We've always described our sound as a bit more guitar driven than normal pop music. Kind of Pink in a boy band form. We've heard a few people say that so now we use it. I think Pink is amazing person to be compared to.
When I was about 9, my brother, who's six years older than me, started getting guitar lessons, and I wouldn't say that it inspired me to pick up an instrument: it was more me being like, 'Well, if he's getting guitar lessons, then so am I. I'm not missing out,' type of thing.
When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn't go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm just a guitar player, and my job is to go out there and play and entertain and do my thing.
The bass is just the crayon that I picked out of the box. I'd probably be writing similar stuff if I played guitar or trumpet. The pictures I want to draw I do with this crayon I chose, which is the bass.
I've always said the bass just happens to be the crayon I picked out of the box. I'd still be drawing the same pictures... should I have picked trumpet or accordion or guitar, whatever it may be. The sounds in my head are still the same.
We used to play music for fun. Much more than now. Now nobody picks up a guitar unless they're paid for it.
My chops have always been sort of weak, because the right side of my body was paralyzed a little bit. It was very limiting. I have to design stuff I can play, and it took me a year and a half to figure out how to hold a guitar pick.
Yes and for two reasons: one, I couldn't find anything to imitate at the time, and secondly because what I heard on the radio didn't bear any resemblance to what I wanted to hear on the guitar.
I had been playing single note instruments and I wanted to hear a guitar played as a piano.
The bulk of my set is instrumental and you have to give yourself and the audience some relief because a performance is not about great guitar playing it's really about entertainment.
My first guitar, a Fender Jazz Master, I traded it in for a Les Paul Deluxe.
In Sonic Youth, at the end of 'Expressway to Yr. Skull,' we'd tap on the backs of our guitars to get this low-level feedback, and if I leaned forward, and the guitar hung off my body, it would resonate differently.
I've always been an acoustic guitar player, and I've pretty much continued to play acoustic guitar throughout all of the Sonic Youth periods. My material for Sonic Youth often started on acoustic guitar.
We're not playing your typical guitar tuning, so there is no normal chords for us to get our footing with. We're pretty much making it up as we go as far as the sounds we're creating. Oftentimes, the song will be inspired by just a certain kind of block of sound that somebody creates.
I always think that, for me, being someone who comes out of electric guitar experimentation, the idea of playing acoustic guitar is, in itself, kind of a radical move.
I'm so used to knowing what to do with an electric guitar and amplifier, but with an acoustic guitar, it's different, but I still have an amp and a whole bunch of pedals.
After Hurricane Sandy, my family and I stayed in our apartment in lower Manhattan before things normalized. We're lucky enough to live on a bit of high ground, so we weren't flooded... but it was intense. Since there was no light, water, or electricity, I spent a lot of time playing acoustic guitar in the evenings.
When I first learned guitar - when I was 14 or 15 - I had an older cousin who showed me some stuff. And he was into all these tunings. He was showing me tunings that people like David Crosby or Neil Young used - like dropped D and open D tunings.
Arranging is the way I put my stamp on my music as much as my guitar playing.
Even though there are some great keyboard players on the album, there are a number of songs with no keyboard on them and the backing is all guitar oriented. This is first time I've ever done this actually.
I used a baritone guitar with a very unusual tuning that became the body of the composition, while the classical guitar is on top of it with the main rhythm part.
So it's more the musician in me that makes me stretch out and try different things more than anything. But, like a lot of guitar players, I have one certain niche that's my thing that I'm better at than the others.
My heroes, I couldn't imagine them practicing. Like Bob Dylan, you know? Bob Dylan's a very, very good guitar player, but it's like he's trying to hide it. I always loved this attitude. When you're very good... it's like being an athlete - and I always hated sports!
I thought it was too 'glam rock' to practice. The problem is that now I'm a pretty bad guitar player.
It's a complicated relationship with a guitar. I love the Bullet, for sure.
I think I might have played a song on piano or guitar in a school talent show. I went to an all girls school, so there were always little things going on, but it wasn't really until I was 17 that I did a proper performance. My first big one was Glastonbury, before I was signed.
I had piano lessons when I was five or six years old, so my mom got me this little keyboard in my room. And then it progressed from that to classical guitar and drums and oboe.
I really enjoy 'festival life,' as it were, and I love the reactions when I bring out my guitar on stage. The crowd are always a bit like, 'What the hell is this urban guy doing with a guitar,' and that's what I love - the shock element of it all!
I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar - hide in the back and just play.
I own a '66 Jaguar. That's the guitar I polish, and baby - I refuse to let anyone touch it when I jump into the crowd.
My dad was a musician. He was a singer and he played the guitar, so music was always around.
The great thing about Nashville back in the day was that the old guys hung out where the young guys were. The established writers like Harlan Howard and Jack Clement gave us encouragement and passed the guitar, you know? Chet Atkins let me sit in on his sessions. Everybody was good to us, and everybody loved the music.
If you've got a guitar and a lot of soul, just bang something out and mean it. You're the superstar.
But my role is to just apply the skills I've learned over the years: you listen to the guitar, you listen to the vocal melodies, you listen to the rhythm, and you come up with something that helps you take the song somewhere.
When I have downtime, music is a big part of my life. Not so much singing, but I play the guitar.
I would have to say I'm bored with the standard rock, guitar solos, but I've done it for five albums now, and this time I wanted to go in a completely different direction. I wasn't interested in showing off any more.
I didn't want to fall into the trap of competing with all these other great guitar players. I just want to sidestep the whole thing and get out of the race.
Guitar players in the nineties seem to be reacting against the technique oriented eighties.
The concept of clearing one's mind before performing a task so that it is consumed by nothing but that task, yet is open at the same time to anything that might happen - that concept can be applied to playing guitar, and it's enormously helpful for improvising.
I feel really fortunate that, in playing guitar and surfing, I've found two things that mean so much to me, and which really complement each other. There's definitely a spiritual thing to both of them; they totally connect you to a higher realm.
After months of playing air guitar to 'Free Bird', what really got me into guitar was watching a documentary about Jimi Hendrix and picking up the Woodstock soundtrack. Listening to his version of 'Star Spangled Banner' and 'Purple Haze.' My brother played acoustic guitar and, idolising him, I thought, 'I'm going to get a guitar.'
It really shocked me just to hear of the fans' response to 'St. Anger' not having guitar solos.
If a guitar is too easy for me to play, it makes me too laid back. I like to battle with my guitar.
Guitar playing is both extremely easy for me and extremely difficult for me at the same time.
One thing I've noticed over the years is that young players - I mean 10- and 12-year-olds - really like my guitar style. There's something in my guitar style that they totally can latch onto and learn quickly, and then go from there to your Yngwie Malmsteens or your Steve Vais or whatever.
I play piano and guitar. Acoustic guitar. I tried studying classical guitar when I was 16 but it got really hard. I could never play a lead to save my life.
I never took any guitar lessons or anything; I never really learned to play covers. I'm actually happy that I never took lessons as a kid. Now, I'd like to take lessons to kind of go deeper. But I think sometimes lessons can steal a person's personality away, because they're trying to do things so technically.
I started playing guitar, like, when I was 17 or so, but where I'm from, you just don't hear about people moving to Nashville and making it. It was such a foreign thing to me. I never knew music was an option for me.
No one ever taught me how to shave; no one ever sat down to watch a Braves game with me. I paid for Yale myself, I lived by myself, I taught myself how to play the guitar. I did this all on my own.
I started writing songs when I was 10. It was a natural way to express myself as a kid. It wasn't until I started listening to jazz, joined the choir and picked up a guitar that my little hobby became something far more serious.
I started teaching myself guitar because I loved singing so much. Then one day kind of out of the blue I found I was writing a song. It just happened organically.
If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.
When I first wanted to play guitar it was because I had seen Brian Setzer. He's so good! I mean I was just blown away.
My first guitar was an Ibanez semi-hollowbody, I think it was called the Artist, from the early '80s.
I saw the Bangles before I was in a band. I really liked their rhythm. That was right when I was trying to learn how to play guitar. I was really frustrated because I couldn't strum, and then I saw Susannah Hoffs do this cool strum on a song, and it was my goal after that to learn how to do that strum.
I always liked really heavy guitar music, but didn't like the long-winded songs that went with it. And I always liked pop songs, but was driven nuts because the guitars were so wimpy sounding. So I decided to put the two together. That's how the Muffs started.
When the band begins to get a name for themselves, and the writers get assigned to bands, they'll hit somebody who just doesn't like that kind of music, or they love hip hop but hate guitar rock.
When I started writing music on the guitar, it started off very folky because of my limited ability to play. It was slow, soft melodies. But then, as I got better on the guitar, I started exploring different sounds.
I suppose I am a frustrated musician so I annoy my family by playing guitar in the house. I used to be into acoustic stuff but my son Joseph is learning drums, so now I have an electric guitar and we play Metallica. We have an amp and a PA in the garage with his drum kit.
I love to be able to put my hands on a keyboard, to have a guitar and a bass within reach, as well as all the effects.
Listening to my dad playing guitar along to 'Sleepwalk' by the Shadows was probably the first time I discovered emotion in music.
In most places that are rich in guitar culture, everyone uses their fingers, like in Spain or Africa. In Japan there are string instruments played that way. It is not until you get in the States that you find people using picks.
I understand I'm supposed to be feminine and dainty, but I'm not. There are two sides to the coin. People are more impressed with things that I do because they almost treat you as if you're handicapped if you're a woman... people can be impressed that I can play a few chords on the guitar.
All I thought about when I was a kid was getting my guitar and entertaining people.
I love the fact that I can go out there on stage with a guitar and sing a song that means something to somebody.
I didn't know that you were supposed to tune the guitar to an open chord, and I learned to play slide with a normal tuning. I think it's a little more melodic that way and doesn't sound so bluesy. Of course, if I could play like David Lindley or Ry Cooder, I'd be a happy man!
I was this little blond girl with a guitar case bigger than me - it was pink and sparkly at the time. But I always took myself seriously, and I think that people took that seriously. I would tell them about my goal list, and they listened. I was like, 'I want to be the one that swings the pendulum.'
The song Dakota was first written in Paris. I was doing a promo trip. It was snowing and the hotel room was really cold and boring and for some reason I just had a go of the guitar and the song came pretty quick.
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