Popular quotes about Guitar! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 50
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.
Zach CondonWell, it grow together. It's like, first time I try to write a song is the first time I try to play the guitar. And so I can write a song without the guitar. But it really grow together. I really like stay with my guitar. But it just happen, is the inspiration come through man. Because, I personally, it look like, could I write a whole heap a tune, it look like. But I pick special tune to write. Cause a man can think of plenty things. Yuh know wah ah mean.
Bob MarleyAnd a lot of the technique and the little T-Bone phrases that define his style, Chuck Berry, when he rearranged the beat, they became rock 'n roll guitar licks. So in essence, T-Bone was not only the first electric blues guitar player, but he was the first electric rock 'n roll guitar player, really.
Duke RobillardThe weeping of the guitar begins. The goblets of dawn are smashed. The weeping of the guitar begins. Useless to silence it. Impossible to silence it. It weeps monotonously as water weeps as the wind weeps over snowfields. Impossible to silence it. It weeps for distant things. Hot southern sands yearning for white camellias. Weeps arrow without target evening without morning and the first dead bird on the branch. Oh, guitar! Heart mortally wounded by five swords.
Federico Garcia LorcaWell I was on the one hand, the more I played the guitar the more I began to really love the guitar and to love virtually any kind of music that anybody played well on guitar.
John FaheyI 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.
B. B. KingI 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.
Boz ScaggsPsychology Today is probably one of my favorite magazines, Guitar, Guitar World. People.
Meredith BrooksLots of kids when they get their first instrument hammer away at it but they don't realise there are so many levels of dynamics with a guitar. You can play one note on a guitar and it really gets to people if it is the right note in the right place played by the right person.
Gary MooreChance in music doesn't have to involve the I Ching or rolling dice or throwing yarrow stalks. It can involve an out-of-tune guitar, or other impossible-to-replicate moments of awkwardness - even more so than an awkward, out-of-tune live performance, because there's something incredible about the way that an out-of-tune guitar becomes part of the song on a record. I won't be precious and say it's part of the composition - that's nonsensica l - but chance occurrences are so crucial to what's distinctive. It's the fingerprints all over so many of these recordings.
David GrubbsMy dad started teaching me how to play guitar when I was 13 years old. When he'd go to work, he'd map out guitar cords on a piece of notebook paper. I'd sit down and look at it every day and practice while he was gone.
Jason AldeanI do get labeled as a guitar band, but the only reason is that's the instrument I know how to play. The guitar is serving the song I'm writing. But I'm learning how to play keyboard better now so that'll start serving the song as well; it'll be another flavor. I'm not going to switch it up with big, fat drum machine beats and real swoopy synths, but yeah...
Mac DeMarcoMy dad is a huge rock and roll lead guitar fan. I didn't even really know that until recently. Everything has to have a guitar solo in it.
SlashI'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.
Danielle BradberyI 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.
Scott Ian... Andres Segovia literally created the genre of classical guitar, which hadn't existed before around 1910. There was flamenco, which he borrowed from, but he actually arranged the works of Mozart and other classical composers for guitar, something that had never been done before ... Segovias' style is not slick or contrived, but it's still very clean and his timing is impeccable ... it's got a feeling of casual elegance, as if he's sitting around the house in Spain with a jug of wine, just playing from the heart.
Roger McGuinnIf 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.
Dean WarehamI fool around with guitar and I can fool around on piano. I don't really play either instrument although I can play a couple of songs on guitar. You don't really need to be able to play to compose. There are many composers and arrangers who work out of their heads.
Frankie LaineI 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.
Jeff TweedyI 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.
Saffron BurrowsIt 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.
J MascisI am, by nature, a guitar player... I learned all of these other instruments around that, and around the theory that I built learning the guitar.
Hunter HayesI had given up the guitar between '75 and '78. I completely lost interest. I was sick of hearing other guitar players and I was tired of my tunes.
Ritchie BlackmoreFrom the classical guitar right through to the furthest electrical experiments and everything in-between, it's amazing what the guitar can actually do. I mean, when one thinks about sounds.
Jimmy PageJust 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.
Robyn HitchcockOne 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.
Keith RichardsI suppose I am a frustrated musician so I annoy my family by playing guitar in the house. I used to be into acoustic stuff but my son Joseph is learning drums, so now I have an electric guitar and we play Metallica. We have an amp and a PA in the garage with his drum kit.
Kevin McKiddI wanted to hear the songs in the way that I had written them, which was, in a way, very basic. So all I wanted to have was drums and another guitar pretty much playing what I wrote on guitar, and I was just going to sing.
Thurston MooreFrom the age of 16 on, I brought my guitar everywhere. I just fell in love with learning the guitar, and I wanted to learn songs and chords, and that led to wanting to start a band, and to wanting to do our first show.
Donavon FrankenreiterI noticed a lot of guitar players neglected the rhythm part of rhythm guitar and decided I would try to focus in that.
Hal SparksI'm playing a D-28 Martin that I've had about 20 years or so. I've got a '51 Martin and I thought I shouldn't be taking this on the road. So I went down to Gruhn Guitars in Nashville and kind of traded around and ended up with this one. This guitar sounded pretty good as new guitar.
Steve YoungI do music because I can just pick up my guitar and sing, and completely satisfy, instant gratification. I don't need a script, I don't people, I don't need anything, cameras, I just have myself and my guitar, or keyboard.
Jeremy RennerMusically, I am still hooked and just hypnotized by the sound of the guitar itself. I mean, a guitar sounds good if you drop it on the floor.
Leo KottkeI 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.
Woody AllenExcept for a few guitar chords, everything I've learned in my life that is of any value I've learned from women.
Glenn FreyI've refined it since [ was living in Beaumont, Texas], but I was just obsessed with the guitar. I remember one day sitting in class and it just came to me how the neck worked. I was enlightened to the scales, and the runs. I just saw it and thought; now I understand it!
Steve YoungSeeing 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.
Richard PatrickI don't separate writing songs from poetry and short fiction. In the area where I work in my house, there's a word processor and a guitar.
Steve EarleAs 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.
Boz ScaggsAs a kid I used to pretend I was John Denver, of all people, and play the guitar and sing Take Me Home, Country Roads.
Skeet UlrichI wasn't a jock in school, and by the 10th grade, when I was in boarding school I was carrying water buckets for the girls' hockey team. I was the kid with long hair and glasses and acne trying to learn how to play guitar and piano in the music center. I was not an athlete past the age of 13 or 14 when they start throwing the ball really fast.
Michael WeatherlyI always wanted a guitar. I always wanted to be a cowboy singer because I also listened to Hank Williams, and he would always sing these neat romantic songs.
Dick DaleSometimes, 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.
Jon Foreman