Quotes About Guitar

I believe I love my guitar more than the others love theirs. For John and Paul, songwriting is pretty important and guitar playing is a means to an end. While they're making up new tunes I can thoroughly enjoy myself just doodling around with a guitar for a whole evening. I'm fascinated by new sounds I can get from different instruments I try out. I'm not sure that makes me particularly musical. Just call me a guitar fanatic instead, and I'll be satisfied.

I don't understand why some people will only accept a guitar if it has an instantly recognizable guitar sound. Finding ways to use the same guitar people have been using for 50 years to make sounds that no one has heard before is truly what gets me off.

I think if you really put your mind to something you can do it. Five and a half years ago I couldn't stand on stage and play guitar. I didn't have enough talent as a kid to play guitar. I started really late. I hired a guitar teacher when I was in Nashville and I applied myself and stayed focused.

It's hilarious, because my guitar has what's known as a tremolo bar or a whammy bar. And the whammy bar is probably the most alien thing on my guitar that could possibly relate to a classical guitar.

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.

Sometimes you want to give up the guitar, you'll hate the guitar. But if you stick with it, you're gonna be rewarded.

Jimi Hendrix is the greatest guitar player in the world... a guy who mastered that instrument. It was talking when he played. And when he did a solo, he made the guitar cry - or made it sound like it was coming from the devil's amplifier.

You are working up to Mr. Fantastic Fiction levels of Zombie Expert, which is like playing Guitar Hero on some level that actually melts the guitar controller, burning your fingers with searing hot plastic till you scream in pain. Only with words. And zombies.

I'm a guitar player. Actually, I think of myself as a songwriter/rhythm-guitar player.

I could care less about sitting around and practicing the guitar for hours a day and trying to be the best guitar player on the planet.

To me, the guitar is a tool for songwriting, and it's fun, too. The day that it's not fun, that's when I'm not gonna play guitar anymore.

The Marshall guitar amplifier doesn't just get louder when you turn it up. It distorts the sound to produce a whole range of new harmonics, effectively turning a plucked string instrument into a bowed one. A responsible designer might try to overcome this limitation - probably the engineers at Marshall tried, too. But that sound became the sound of, among others, Jimi Hendrix. That sound is called electric guitar.

I've played guitar for years, and wanted to play guitar, but we got halfway through the last one and realized we hadn't used any.

I think I always thought of the guitar as the vehicle to be able to make some musical idea up. The only appeal to learning more chords was having more chords to put into songs. I never got too wrapped up in becoming technically good. So writing songs happened pretty simultaneously with learning how to play the guitar.

For me, the most difficult thing is that I am learning melodies on guitar from some songs whose melodies were not meant to be played on guitar. Ever. They were intended mostly for keyboards or melodic percussion.

If a guitar is too easy for me to play, it makes me too laid back. I like to battle with my guitar.

I never wanted to play guitar when I was younger. I wanted to be a drummer because everybody plays guitar, and I didn't want to do what everybody else wanted to do.

I am a very, very fortunate and blessed guitar player to always be surrounded by musical monsters, so my life has been a nonstop jam session. I crave the musical adventure of sonic creativity and am powerfully inspired everytime I grab a 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.

Listening to as many guitar solos as possible is the best method for someone in the early stages. But saxophone solos can be helpful. They're interesting because they are all single notes, and therefore can be repeated on the guitar. If you can copy a sax solo you're playing very well, because the average saxophonist can play much better than the average guitarist.

I think guitar-wise, Eric Clapton was a big influence on me. I got to spend time around him. He's kind of strange, mysterious, serious and he always has played such hot guitar.

Another guitar player who had a tremendous influence on my life was Howard Roberts ... I'd listened to a lot of Tal Farlow, Johnny Smith and Kenny Burrell, and I was certainly into those guys, but I was awestruck at the intensity and fire in Howards' guitar playing... for me, it became a roadmap.

What happens is, especially when I was writing for my band, Creedence, and it's the way I write now, I go into "guitar lick" mode. When I do, it sort of leads into a real song. I'd say to myself, your songwriting is coming up with a guitar lick, and the rest is easy!

Inspiration and stealing are two completely different things. If somebody wants to make a song like "Stairway to Heaven" and writes a song on acoustic guitar, Led Zeppelin does not own every song that's on acoustic guitar for the rest of time.

I said this to my daughter, if you don't practice the guitar, when you get older you wouldn't be able to play it. It's that simple. If you want to play the guitar, you put a half hour in everyday, but you have to do it.

I loved rock and roll when that came in, Bill Haley, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, all those great records. So I begged my mom and dad for a guitar, which eventually they did get me for Christmas, but it went out of tune very quickly, and it hurt my fingers.

I know artists whose medium is life itself, and who express the inexpressible without brush, pencil, chisel or guitar. They neither paint nor dance. Their medium is Being. Whatever their hand touches has increased life.... They are the artists of being alive.

I love the guitar for its harmony; it is my constant companion in all my travels.

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

There's so much to be said for making your guitar sound like a synthesizer and try to make your drummer sound like a drum machine.

As a guitar player, you can gravitate to the blues because you can play it easily. It's not a style that's difficult to pick up. It's purely emotive and dead easy to get a start with.

I started playing ukulele first for 2 years from age 9 to 11 and got my first guitar and got inspired by blues I heard on the radio that turned me on and I started learning myself.

Nobody seems to play Yamaha electrics, but it's the best guitar I own.

Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they're going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It's just a given law.

I've been used for writing rhythm guitar chords for a long time because it's so easy to play and chords just sound good on it.

I learned to play guitar on my lying back while I was bed-ridden. I only thought to record the songs because sometimes I would I couldn't remember what I had just done. Eventually I started singing, because I thought if I sang it that would help to remember even more. But I wasn't trying to sing. And then one day-this is really weird -I just wrote a song. It came out at a rapid rate and I recorded it and I listened back to it and was like "Wow, it's a tune."

I play mostly guitar, and I played drums in my brother's band for a while growing up.

I got my first guitar in October of 1968. I'm self-taught.

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.

Even on guitars I've had misfortunes. I never used to clip the strings on my guitar and then one day I accidentally poked my right eye with the E-string. My eye just wouldn't stop tearing up and I could barely keep it open. The doctor said I didn't do any major damage, but I had to wear a patch for a little while. I still have a tiny red mark on my eyeball from it; I'm still not sure it's the same.

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

It's how I learned to play guitar - sitting with Led Zeppelin and Cheap Trick records, backing the needle up and learning how to play along. When the band started, by doing something that was very obvious to us and sort of traditional, it set us apart at the time from what was happening musically.

I started playing the acoustic guitar for more singer-songwriter type stuff. I bet if I would have gotten more approval for my "rock playing", I might be a world class shredder.

I never practice my guitar. From time to time I just open the case & throw in a piece of raw meat.

I like to play guitar, jam out, play the blues, go watch movies. I love movies.

That's pretty much why I went into show business because I wanted to have a guitar and sing unaccompanied, that was like my fantasy of the perfect life.

You know, once you've had that guitar up so loud on the stage, where you can lean back and volume will stop you from falling backward, that's a hard drug to kick.

Artie travels all the time. The rehearsals were just miserable. Artie and I fought all the time. He didn't want to do the show with my band; he just wanted me on acoustic guitar.