Quotes About Guitar

I was pillaging a lot of music that had nothing to do with guitar playing, using a lot of strange tunings and voicings and chord structures that aren't really that natural to the guitar; I ended up developing a harmonic palette that's not particularly natural to the guitar because I was always trying to make my guitar sound like something else.

Most of my music theory knowledge is based on piano. But I write on guitar a lot, too. I'm not a great guitar player by any means. I'm not a great instrumentalist. I play piano on stage. I don't play guitar on stage, but I use it to write quite a lot.

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.

I was bought an electric guitar when I was 12, but my guitar teacher beat me up. I didn't like guitar lessons... My teacher was obviously bored giving me lessons, and one day I offered him a liquorice toffee, but he didn't answer. So I threw it at him, it hit him in the face, and he sort of beat me up.

The guitar is a means of expressing music, When you get into the emotional side of it, then it's not the guitar that matters so much as the music itself. But the guitar is the vehicle I use. It's how I express myself. As for the emotional side, music takes up where language leaves off. To try and verbalize what music says, emotionally and spiritually, is futile. Let me put it this way, Louis Armstrong once said if you've got to ask, you'll never know.

I practice really hard, every day. I started that about 13 or 14 years ago; it's a discipline now. But the writing is a whole other thing. It'll come from handling a guitar, mostly; thinking up little guitar riffs. I was born and raised a rock 'n' roll guy, and that's the rock 'n' roll ethic, at least through my experience.

I did take guitar lessons as a teenager, though, and I started to teach myself how to play everything I could play on the guitar on piano, so I had a really weird, non-traditional route to proficiency. I think it probably helped me come at things from a new angle.

I was interested in the electric guitar even before I knew the difference between electric and acoustic. The electric guitar seemed to be a totally fascinating plank of wood with knobs and switches on it. I just had to have one.

A guitar riff played on a piano doesn't come close to the purity of it being played on a guitar but I faked it enough to get by.

When I came to the States, I still wanted to be an electric guitar player. But moved to Santa Fe in '86. And just decided that nylon string guitar is really what I wanted to do... And that really change my life totally as well... And Santa Fe is one of those really unusual places that is such an interesting mix of culture. There is a lot of from restaurants to music... I remember one of the first groups I saw playing there in the back of a restaurant, was a banjo player, a classical violinist, and a flamenco guitarist. And I thought to myself, "What? You know, this is great."

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.

Every July, August and part of September I escape of the guitar, I escape of Paco de Lucia and I go to Mexico to the Carrabian. I have a little house there where I spend two months listening to music, no playing because I don't bring the guitar with me, fishing and cooking my fish and charging the batteries for new concerts.

I'd probably get a much quicker and better result if I went to a really great guitar player for a certain style of guitar that I have a problem doing. But there is a challenge in figuring out if I can do that myself.

People ask me to describe how I play, and the most obvious answer is that I'm a jazz influenced guitar player. But I'm not a jazz guitar player. Wes Montgomery was a jazz guitarist, Joe Pass was a jazz guitarist (laughs).

I'm not a real musician. If you give me a bass guitar and you ask me to improvise something, or even be with some musicians and follow them, I wouldn't be able to do it. And I want to change that. I want to be able to be in a group and take my guitar and play with them, without someone showing me, "Okay, you're going to do this and that," because music has always been a big part of my life.

My first instrument was the drums. Not quite sure why I quit and changed to guitar, but I'm sure my parents might have convinced me that the guitar was way better.

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.

When you think of blues, all you think about is crying guitar like B.B. King's guitar. You think about someone crying that their woman's gone. And how bad life is and all that. Why can't it be something happy with the blues? Why can't it have a hip-hop beat to which you can do the dances of today?

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.

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!

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

I do not consider myself a guitar player. My father is a guitar player - I'm not.

I think if you're a lady playing a guitar, other ladies need to see you playing the guitar, and they don't need to see men come out and fix your equipment for you. It just looks incredibly pussy. So I just do it all myself.

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

Just as with a guitar, you can improvise a guitar solo, and they'd probably be similar each time, but they won't be exactly the same. With the word, it's probably a bit freer than that. I probably repeat myself more musically than I do verbally.

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

When "Here Comes the Sun" started, what happened? No, the sun didn't come out, but Mom opened up like the sun breaking through the clouds. You know how in the first few notes of that song, there's something about George's guitar that's just so hopeful? It was like when Mom sang, she was full of hope, too. She even got the irregular clapping right during the guitar solo. When the song was over, she paused. "Oh Bee," she said. "This song reminds me of you." She had tears in her eyes.

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.

I never really trained to be a musician, but I've been playing guitar since I was around, like, 13 years old. For me, the guitar has always been the instrument that I've played. I play a little piano. I taught myself everything by ear. I don't read music at all, which has not really been a hindrance.

When Lonnie Mack came out with the guitar instrumental "Memphis" I thought, Oh God, finally somebody we guitar players can relate to !

Oddly enough, Hendrix is not my favorite guitar player. There are very few guitar players I get feeling from.

A good example of a lyric that makes me laugh but might not hit anybody right away is, "Sit behind the guitar and play the chords," just because it's such a lame image. It's not rock'n'roll at all to be sitting behind a guitar.

There's people that say “It's not fair You have all that stuff.” I wasn't born with it. It was a horrible process to get to this. It took me my whole life. If you're new at this- and by “new at it.” I mean 15 years in, or even 20- you're just starting to grow traction. Young musicians believe they should be able to throw a band together and be famous, and anything that's in their way is unfair and evil. What are you, in your 20s, you picked up a guitar? Give it a minute.

I invented rock & roll. Jimi Hendrix was my guitar player. James Brown was my vocalist.

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

My dad wanted me to play when I was a kid, so I learned to play the guitar. I pursued a career in music because I love it so much and I enjoy what it does to those who hear it.

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

I got a bit bored of just me and my guitar.

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

I grew up playing the guitar. I started when I was nine, and by the time I was nine and a half or ten, I was doing seven or eight hours' practice every day. I did two hours' practice at six o'clock in the morning before I went to school, and another two hours as soon as I got home from school in the afternoon. Then I did four hours at night before I went to bed. I did that until I was fourteen or fifteen.

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

Yes, we three were so happy, my wife, my guitar and me!

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 never listen to lead singers.

There was this big skiffle craze happening for a while in England.... Everybody was in a skiffle group..All you needed was an acoustic Guitar, a washboard with thimbles for percussion, and a tea-chest- you know, the ones they used to ship tea from India- and you just put a broom handle on it and a bit of string, and you had a bass..you only needed two chords; Jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing jing-jinga-jing. And I think that's basically where i've always been at. I'm just a skiffler, you know. Now I do posh skiffle, that's all it is.

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.

If you can't play guitar and sing in Nashville, you might as well just be a construction worker.

That happens every time I get behind a guitar, regardless of what I'm saying, 'cause music is freedom and being free is the closest I've ever felt to being spiritual.