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.'

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.

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 always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I'd shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can't pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that's how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.

In my own musical existence I don't feel that being a guitar player is like the best thing on earth to be. I would rather be a balanced musician. Playing in a group, I'm tending to think more about the music and less about the guitar. That's just me getting older. I'm not interested in being a virtuoso guitar player or anything like that.

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 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.

You don't need to be talented. You don't even have to play the guitar to be a guitar player in a punk-rock band. So I, in a very naïve and teenage way, said, "That's it. I'm going to be in a band."

I'll try any guitar just to see if it's different in an effort to see if it will lead me anywhere. I'm trying to have a guitar built. What's needed is better instruments, better amplifiers, better hardware for electric music to get better.

I used to carry my dad's empty guitar case around the neighborhood because I wanted people to think I played the guitar. I would put flintstones vitamins in it in case I got tired, so I could pop some and keep walking.

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

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.

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

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 think there are quite a few new Instro/Surf groups that are really great. The Mermen are good and there doing something different. The Space Cossacks, Penetrators, The Fathoms, I really like The Falcons from Canada, Mike Beddoes is a really fine guitar player. I like Nokie Edwards of The Ventures, who gave me a guitar lesson once when we were playing opposite them in 1962 at The Rose Garden Ballroom in Pismo Beach. That's were The Impacts started and got signed to Del Fi in 1962.

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.

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!

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.

This guitar is such a pal. It's a psychiatrist. It's a doggone bartender. It's a housewife. This guy is everything. Whenever I find that I've got a problem, I'll go pick my guitar up and play. It's the greatest pal in the whole world.

It seemed so wimpy at first when I started to play [guitar]. So I started playing loud with lots of effects just to try to mimic the dynamic [of the drums]. Drums seemed a lot more expressive. [I was] Trying to emulate the feeling of playing the drums on the guitar - I guess that's why I played it so loud.

Being a professional wrestler was never one of my goals in life. I always wanted to be some kind of entertainer. I used to want to be a rock singer or a guitar player but I can't sing and I can't play the guitar.

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

My chosen instrument is guitar and, fortunately, I'm able to muddle through that. I can play guitar to the point where I can express myself artistically.

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.

I've always thought that the act of playing the guitar was the act of trying to make a point of playing the guitar.

We weren't listening to guitar bands, we were thoroughly ashamed of being a guitar band. So we bought loads of keyboards and learned how to use them, and when we got bored we went back to guitars.

I've always lived in that guitar world. I have noticed kids being more into the real essence of guitar music now.

I started playing heavy-metal guitar because that's what I liked. And then I got into classical guitar because it was so technically complicated.

There is far more sensitivity in acoustic guitar players than could ever be compared to any synthesizer. That's a personal point of view but that's the way I see it. I think that's what it's all about. The drive, the fire, the passion - it all comes out on the guitar.

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.

Sometimes we woke up and feel like a Guitar Master, sometimes we woke up and feel like a complete fool. but that's the fun part of learning guitar

To play the guitar well is easy, to play the guitar poorly is difficult.

It's a guy thing, playing the guitar. Being a female and trying to go to the same auditions as the guys, it's pretty hard.

From now on all of my guitar solos will be in morse code.

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

I was left with an urge to make the guitar sound like things it shouldn't be able to sound like.

I love to play the guitar. I also love photography and fashion.

I suppose ultimately I'm interested in music. I'm a musician. I'm not a gunslinger. That's the difference between what I do and what a lot of guitar heroes do.

I've always wanted to smash a guitar over someone's head. You just can't do that with a piano.

I watch movies and hang with my family, go shopping, love to cuddle with my dog, Happy, & write songs with my guitar!

Sometimes, the best songs are the ones you write without any pen and paper or audio recording device or guitar in your hands. Because there's nothing between you and the melody; it's just a great lyric.

You hit a guitar, you hit a note, you hit a drum, you hit an organ. Meat and potatoes. Simplicity. Not getting too caught up in little tweezers of perfection.

I was really young, but I can't say that I wrote much of anything. I liked to scribble; I thought of it as that. But I was playing guitar and ukulele when I was in second grade.

Guitar playing is very important to me. It's like golf to some other people; it's important to me that I play good.

I just think that the question of women in rock or women playing guitar, I just think it's such a non-issue, and I think that probably the sooner critics and press outlets can just erase the 'what's it like being a women in rock?' question from their vocabulary, the better off everyone will be.

My life has been a roller coaster ride, but somehow I've always been able to land on my feet and still play the guitar.

We have to focus on his early work, and just one or two of his movies, and elements of his TV shows, to keep his memory pure. People now know that Elvis could play a mean rhythm guitar himself, and needed no other musicians to perform a great song. But Elvis was not just a rock star, he was an all-round entertainer.