Quotes About Guitar

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.'

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. You know some people have that really embarrassing guitar face? I remember thinking about this when I was doing the DJing, because... you do have to focus, and that's what happens, it's your focus face. But you're in a movie, so you should probably lock it up.

I always hated jazz guitar. I loved jazz saxophone but I hated jazz guitar. If I would buy an organ trio record I would make sure I'd buy one that did not have a guitar player on it. The sound was awful!

My vocation is more in composition really than anything else - building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army.

I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.

Psychology Today is probably one of my favorite magazines, Guitar, Guitar World. People.

These days I keep a journal, so I'm constantly sketching down my thoughts, or lines that come to me...ideas for songs. And then when I have a moment to myself, I'll sit down with my guitar and open my journal, and start kind of massaging things together, and see if a song takes shape. Or sometimes, I'll just be hanging out with my guitar and come up with a chord progression or a lick, and that'll sort of sit around for a while waiting to marry itself to some words. So it's sort of haphazard and it's like...junk culture. I go around finding shiny objects and I glue them together laughs.

I've never really been schooled in music theory. I'm a guitar player, and I attack the guitar in a certain way that it not fully unique to me, but it's more unique that some other people.

The guitar is of no great importance to me. The people it brings to me are what matter. They are what I'm extremely grateful for, because they are alive. The guitar is just an apparatus.

The music I'm playing now is the music I always imagined myself playing when I was a kid. It's been nice to use my instrument a bit more - play the guitar in a more fun way with riffs and stuff like that - rather than just propping up a whole song with a guitar and my vocals. There's so much more energy in the crowd as well; they've been bouncing around and having fun, and it's nice to feel like you're a part of something in a room rather than just performing for a crowd.

I enjoy listening to Olla Bell. There is also this young guitar player, John Duke Lippincott, he sometimes goes by Johnny Duke. He is the most brilliant guitar player from right here in Wilmington, DE.

If I look at my own recordings, I think generally there is a focal point within the song and often it's the instrumental bridge or a guitar solo where we try to do something unexpected, something beautiful or weird, or beautiful because it is weird. And of course I fail half the time, but yes that is the goal, to create even a few seconds of bliss, or sadness. The electric guitar is a great instrument for doing this because it is capable of surprising you. There are so many different sounds available.

I was a very bad musician. I was the world's worst guitar player, so when I was performing solo with a guitar, I had to keep things very simple.

I was trained at classical piano as a youngster back in PA. To rebel, I bought a drum set and played in some rock & roll bands. In college I picked up a guitar and became obsessed with practicing which led to playing guitar in indie rock bands in the mid 90's. Which led me to Los Angeles.

A guitar is something you can hold and love and it's never going to bug you. But here's the secret about the guitar - it's defiant. It will never let you conquer it. The more you get involved with it, the more you realize how little you know.

Treat each guitar track-and each song-completely different. For example, if I'm using a certain amp and guitar on one track, I'll deliberately use something else for the next tune or overdub.

Speaking of stage freight. I was terrified! It was in NOLA at an all ages show. I was wearing Jeans, a Van Halen t-shirt, and a bandana on my neck. Once I gripped that microphone stand, I did not let go! I plugged my microphone into a guitar FX pedal. Then at the end of the a Black Sabbath song we were covering, I hit the guitar pedal. It was horrific!

My father was a guitar player, and I was raised with a super high standard of what good guitar playing was.

I grew up not really listening to guitar players. Especially when I was studying music, I was just interested in piano players and arrangers and composers; I came to playing in a band from the perspective of someone who never expected to play guitar in a band.

Can you imagine a guy breaking into your car, and he steals your guitar case 'cause he thinks it's a guitar, and he gets it home and opens it up and there's a rake inside it, an electric toilet plunger and a dog skull? That actually happened.

I approach playing acoustic guitar more of as a percussive instrument. It's fragile. I don't have a lot of finesse when it comes to my guitar playing.

Sometimes I don't pick up the guitar for six months or so," "Other times I get away, go to a hotel or something, to write songs. Or go stay with a friend and bring the dog and do stuff away from my normal routine. Then I sit down and play guitar at night. I do it differently every time . There is no set way.

One guy can ruin an instrument. Jimi Hendrix, bless his heart - how I wish he was still around - almost inadvertently ruined guitar. Because he was the only cat who could do it like that. Everybody else just screwed it up, and thought wailing away (on the guitar) is the answer. But it ain't; you've got to be a Jimi to do that, you've got to be one of the special cats.

It's one thing having a great song, but I think for me if you take it to the next level... say you had a guitar and a vocal, and the song was amazing but the vocalist wasn't that great and it just was a guitar and vocal acoustic track, switching that to something like an amazing voice singing the exact same song with the instrumentation being really nice and lush or unique in some way and interesting and diverse... I think it's all about the instrumentation and textures in the sound.

When I produce someone's record I have to remember it's their record..no matter what I bring to it..er, sometimes that's not too easy:) It is a responsibility made less easy by people I work with encouraging me to play guitar on their record...A soon as I start playing guitar on someone's record it inevitably starts to sound like me...not always a good thing.

I have come to the conclusion - and I don't know why it took me so long, but nevertheless, I'm here now - that a lot of people tell me they don't get enough guitar on my albums. So I decided to do an album where the guitar would be the singer, playing the melody.

At some point, I had to make a decision: I could practice more and become a really great guitar player or I could work on writing better songs. There are only so many hours in the day, and I found writing songs more fulfilling than working on becoming this virtuoso guitar player.

I do play the guitar, and I can sing, but just enough to carry a tune.

I started playing guitar kind of by accident.

I'm left handed, but my dad taught me to play guitar right-handed.

Guitar playing is just something that came to me and is really second nature now.

A guitar is just theoretically built wrong. Each string is an interval of fourths, and then the B string is off. Theoretically, that's not right, all the strings should be off.

I grew up with all kinds of music, but my heart was particularly drawn to Country Music because of the guitar playing, the lyrics and of artists like Steve Warner and Vince Gill.

Don't have much, but what I've got is yours, except of course my steel guitar.

The disgusting stink of a too-loud electric guitar; now that's my idea of a good time.

Everyone gets frustrated and aggressive, and I'd sooner take my aggression out on a guitar than on a person.

I play guitar and I love the Beatles and melodic music.

I get to do a lot of things I don't usually get to do with the boys. I love playing guitar and rocking out on stage, so I do a ton of that with my solo project. [Backstreet Boys] all give each other the freedom to do our own thing, which just makes the bond the five of us have stronger

I first picked up the bass guitar when I was twelve years old, and fooled around with it. By the time I was thirteen I got pretty serious about it.

At the Muddy Waters thing, I played the first song by myself on an acoustic guitar. I thought that was great that y'all did that tribute to Muddy Waters. I had a real good time

I've always been on a personal mission to save the guitar.

I taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.

Anything that has more of Graham's guitar playing, I'm bound to like.

Well I thought my pickin' would set them on fire, but nobody wanted to hire a guitar man.

May was so great to work with, he even took me over to Japan for some dates. It blew me away when he let me play his guitar on stage with him.

Jeff Beck is probably my favorite and biggest influence on the guitar. Touring with him in 2010 was such a milestone. I used to show up early every day just to hear his sound check, which sometimes lasted an hour.

Mention Hubert Sumlin, as well, because Hubert's a great man, and again, you know, I don't play the guitar very good, but when I'm playing this kind of music, I always have him in my mind. I wish I could play like Hubert.

We had to sit in this courtroom in Reno for six weeks. It was like Disneyworld. We had no idea what a subliminal message was - it was just a combination of some weird guitar sounds, and the way I exhaled between lyrics. I had to sing 'Better by You, Better Than Me' in court, a cappella. I think that was when the judge thought, 'What am I doing here? No band goes out of its way to kill its fans'.