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.

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.

I'm not a big fan of guitar face. You know, when someone's playing guitar, and they make this really embarrassing face, like they smush their lips together and... they look you in the eye and it's really humiliating. You know some people have that really embarrassing guitar face? I remember thinking about this when I was doing the DJing, because... you do have to focus, and that's what happens, it's your focus face. But you're in a movie, so you should probably lock it up.

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.

1962 to 1965, where suddenly the guitar became this icon of youth culture all over the world, thanks mostly to the Beatles. Add to that, that I saw A Hard Day's Night 12 or 13 times, and that the guitar was the one instrument that my parents absolutely refused to let in the house. So you add it up and see that irresistible forces led me to the guitar.

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.

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.

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.

It's always a pleasure when you can compose guitar parts from a strong vocal and not just put the melody on top of guitar riffs.

I have a lot of guitar heroes I guess, some of them are female and some of them are male. Robert Fripp is one of them, and Marc Ribot, that's another guitar hero.

Let’s be realistic about this, the guitar can be the single most blasphemous device on the face of the earth. That’s why I like it . . . The disgusting stink of a too-loud electric guitar: now that’s my idea of a good time.

My dad has always been very proud of me but I think I have exceeded his expectations. When I told him I wanted to be an actor and moved to New York City, I think he assumed I would be playing the guitar on the subway and collecting spare change in my guitar case. The fact that I'm not doing that means that I'm a huge success.

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 can play rhythm guitar. I know how to hold a guitar and strum it.

If your going to learn to play lead guitar, get an electric guitar .. it doesn't have to be an expensive one .. acoustic guitars aren't good for learning lead, because you can't play up very high on the neck and they take heavier-gauge strings which makes it hard to bend notes

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.

Once I got a guitar that was relatively user-friendly, but not super-duper easy, I really came on as a guitarist, at that point. It helped. It was a super-expensive guitar either, but something needs to steer you a bit, if you're playing an instrument that is really hard.

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.

A guitar is something you can hold and love and it's never going to bug you. But here's the secret about the guitar - it's defiant. It will never let you conquer it. The more you get involved with it, the more you realize how little you know.

I 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.

My setup for a live performance lately has been just guitar and synthesizer. Sometimes I only bring one. The guitar is in pretty bad shape and isn't sounding the same. Most of the time my live approach has been pretty different from recording.

Guitar solos, to me, should be a really articulate way to make fun of guitar solos.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

My guitar is really tempermental. I don't give up on it though, I'm close to my guitar!

When I'm not touring, I sing at home, either at the piano or I'll pick up my guitar, singing old Buck Owens songs.

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.

When I'm not writing music, I'm playing guitar, or reading philosophy. So all I have left is just an hour or two for Claudia Schiffer.

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

Guitar is easy, all it takes is 5 fingers, 6 strings and 1 a**hole

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

Weedly-weedly-wee, make a face, hold your guitar like it's your weenie, point it heavenward, and look like you're really doing something. Then, you get a big ovation while the smoke bombs go off, and the motorized lights in your truss twirl around.

I heard the Beatles and the Stones, and Mom bought me an electric guitar. I played lead for four years and then switched to bass. One day someone suggested that I should sing, so I sheepishly stepped up to the microphone and the rest is rock history.

I've always loved the electric guitar: to hold it and work it and hear what it does is unreal.

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.

When it's a funky uptempo song, you're basically having the same kind of release you would have when you have sex, only it lasts longer. Whether you're playing it on the guitar or on the dance floor, you're in that moment.

I started playing guitar at the age of 8 or 9 years. Very early, and I was like already into pop music and was just trying to copy what I heard on the radio. And at a very early age I started experimenting with old tape recorders from my parents. I was 11 or 12 at that time and then when I was like 14 or 15 I had a punk band. I made all the classic rock musician's evolutions and then in the early nineties I bought my first sampler and that is how I got into electronic music, because I was able to produce it on my own. That was quite a relief.

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.

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.

I'll get up there and I'll do my guitar solos in one of those space outfits.

But that guitar is the perfect companion to the human voice. You rest it against your gut, against your heart, and when you strum it the vibrations go outwards for all to hear, but the vibration also hits you on your body.