Quotes About Guitar

What interested me about Chuck Berry was the way he could step out of the rhythm part with such ease, throwing in a nice, simple riff, and then drop straight into the feel of it again. We used to play a lot more rhythm stuff. We'd do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. You can't go into a shop and ask for a "lead guitar". You're a guitar player, and you play a guitar.

My dad is obsessed with music, so I was raised around this guitar player that really wanted me to be a guitar player. One of my earliest memories is him kind of forcing a guitar on all my brothers and me. You know, "You have to practice three hours a day!" I hated guitar at the time. I kind of picked up trumpet to spite him.

Now, guitar was pretty cool. Everybody knew something on the guitar. So I wanted to play guitar, but I told my dad if he wanted me to keep studying something, Id like to study piano.

One interesting thing - I play bass and guitar and stuff like that. I know those instruments really well. But I don't know how to play clarinet or trombone or any of these other instruments. I don't actually know how to play ukulele even though I've played it a lot in the past. Because of the weird tuning it's not exactly like a guitar. That's one of the reasons I like that instrument - it makes for surprises. It's not so predictable as the bass or the guitar is for me.

I'd always had an interest in guitar from about seven years old. But I first actually had lessons when I was about fifteen in Scotland, in Edinburgh. There was a folk club there and a girl called Jill Doyle taught me the guitar, who happened to be Davey Graham's sister. Davey Graham is one of my heroes and always has been. Fantastic guitar player. And he's had a strong influence on me all the way through.

All gut strings. Thats just the first kind of guitar I played, it was a nylon string guitar. And to me, its the purest form of guitar making, and I just enjoy doing it.

I bought one of those Learn How to Play Guitar Chords By Yourself and it shows you the diagram where to put your hands and I took that in my room, sat with my singles and learned how to play guitar.

I kind of grew up a guitar nerd and I tried to figure out how to shred on an acoustic guitar as a kid, while listening to jazz or whatever. So that is kind of a different thing and my church background, growing up with worship kind of the ground that I learned how to play music from. Those are all odd ways of growing up, compared to most people, so I think the music has plenty of uniqueness in that.

There are guys in country music who are wizards on the guitar. If you're a country fan, you're used to it. But as a rock guitar player, you listen.

I love melody, and that's what I love about pop music. The words can become what they are through a special melody. I learned to play guitar by myself, and writing songs came with playing guitar, so the writing isn't one part and the music something else.

I had a guitar when I was 6 or 7, a plastic guitar with the Beatles' faces on it. It would be a collector's item now. It would fetch a hefty sum, I imagine.

It was quite nice to get an opportunity to introduce on the second album something a bit fresh for us. For the rest of the world, perhaps it's not, because guitar is quite ubiquitous, but for us it's exciting to just have guitar on the record.

Then the musical instruments appeared. Dad’s snare drum from the house, Henry’s guitar from his car, Adam’s spare guitar from my room. Everyone was jamming together, singing songs: Dad’s songs, Adam’s songs, old Clash songs, old Wipers songs. Teddy was dancing around, the blond of his hair reflecting the golden flames. I remember watching it all and getting that tickling in my chest and thinking to myself: This is what happiness feels like.

51 Martin [guitar] sounded pretty good as new guitar. Martin has several levels of guitars now, and this one is pretty good.

I'm really interested in trying to learn how to play the guitar since I've got two of them! I can kind of mess around on the piano, but I'm going to start learning how to play the guitar.

I play the guitar. This year at the Sundance film festival, I joined the band from 'The Guitar' on stage. We warmed up for Patti Smith, and then the director Michel Gondry got on the drums to play some songs from the soundtrack to his film Be Kind Rewind with Mos Def. It was pretty mad.

At age ten I switched to guitar, and I've loved the instrument ever since. And I love to practice. I just do. I just love guitar. It still brings a smile to my face!

The use of electronics is a natural extension of the instrument - it is an electric guitar. So we guitarists have been plugging into something since 1931, and we are not about to stop now. Current advances in technology means we can have a huge array of sounds at our fingertips, and this offers amazing possibilities to the contemporary composer. It is always a guitar (I don't play synthesizer) but it becomes something else all together - more like sculpting sound in real time using metal wires, 5 fingers and a pick.

I got my first guitar when I was 16. I'd play for my family and friends, but taking that guitar out there into the wide, wide world wasn't something I ever thought about.

I've always been at war with the guitar. All vocalists are fighting a war with the electric rhythm guitar.

On acoustic guitar I tend to stay in the key of D for some reason. On electric guitar I keep basic: C, G, D, and A. The key of D minor is also real good for me.

One time I said: maybe I should burn a guitar tonight. You know smash a guitar or something like that. And they said: yeah, yeah! I said: you really think I should? They said: yeah, that'd be cool. I said: well, ok.

I didn't want to take the guitar solos down note-for-note, but more or less use them as a map, and keep all the hooks from the guitar playing, and let myself come through.

The first guitar I ever had was a gut-string Spanish guitar, and I couldn't really get the hang of it. I was only 13, and I talked my grandparents into buying it for me. I tried and tried and tried, but got nowhere with it.

When you go to bed at night, you get seven or eight hours of sleep. I've had enough sleep. I've rested, and it's as simple as that. I want to do it now. I didn't want to three years ago. I was waiting until it felt right. I wanted to get back to falling in love with my guitar again, and hanging out with my guitar like I would a friend.

It's a good feeling to be at a place where you know who you are as an artist. I didn't know back then, I just wanted to give my family a better life and myself. I wanted to sing, but I didn't know as an artist who I wanted to be and because of all those experiences, it helped shape me into who I am and what I've now realized and what it is that brings me happiness which is when I pick up the guitar and do records.

Seeing my children makes me come most alive. I come home and I see my kids' faces light up when they see me at the door with my guitar case. They run to me, we hug. I never go beyond a few weeks without being in their presence, so they have adjusted quite well.

I feel my spot is somewhere between a bass player and a rhythm guitar player. I play with a pick. I play very aggressively. I always have a distortion pedal in line, and I play less melodies and do more stuff against the guitars that create melodies.

I mean, the sound of an amplified guitar in a room full of people was so hypnotic and addictive to me, that I could cross any kind of border to get on there.

So I'll set a cycle in motion and pop it into record and I'll lay down a drum pattern, a bass line, a keyboard and guitar part, and once the groove is going I launch into the song and sing my song over the top.

My earliest musical memory was getting to watch my dad play drums in a local band. He's a banker by trade, but a drummer at heart. I remember seeing the guitar player do the solo from "Werewolves of London" with his teeth, and that was the moment that had me hooked.

With a guitar I would be able to express the things I felt in sounds.

As a musician myself, it annoys the hell out of me to watch an actor trying to play a guitar out of time with the music.

The Hamsters really kick ass - Slim is one of your greatest guitar players

It is dishonest the way that people suddenly think they've found guitars, and wear their guitar as a badge.

My older brother was the guitar player in the neighborhood band. My parents were the cool ones that had the basement for rehearsal. Rather than hang with my peers after school, I wanted to just listen to the band. More than that, I wanted to play.

My mom always told me I should have a Plan B. I said that if I'm not going to play guitar I'm going to play drums. And if I'm not going to play drums, I'm going to play bass. I always just wanted to play music. I was completely obsessed.

It's just a favorite language to me, that country finger-picking guitar style.

If I don't channel pain into a song, I play my guitar or play the piano or play my drums, or go swimming.

Prince is the ultimate performer. Prince is that dude that's going to get on stage by himself, if he need to, but hold you in the palm of his hand. Like, you can't take your eyes off the man when he's on stage, and he could just be sitting there playing his guitar.

My first love in music was jazz, but I like it all," "I reacted emotionally to Art Blakey and, of course, to Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery. I was all of 16 when I had my first guitar lesson with Joe. But I never focused on being a bebop player. I loved the harmony, rhythm and phrasing, but I wanted to apply them to my own concept and sound.

I'd much rather talk about guitar playing. I hate it when people ask me about my lyrics. I always feel like telling them to just go and read them.

But we go out as a band because we enjoy each others company, first of all. And its the payoff for me, to go out and play my art and still play guitar, which is my life.

I never wanted to stop. I feel like to the day I die I'll play guitar and sing.

The most important part of any rock song is the guitar solo.

The good thing about playing the guitar: You can take on different kinds of music. I'm always doing something different from the last thing I did because I have the shortest attention span on earth.

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

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.