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.

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.

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."

And at the time, for one of the few times in my life I didn't have a band, I just had myself and the guitar, so I was going to have to do something with just my voice, just the guitar and just my songs that was going to move someone enough to give me a shot. So I wrote songs that were very lyrically alive and lyrically dense. And they were unique, but it really came out of the motivation to - or I understood it was - I was going to have to make my mark that way.

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.

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

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.

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.

I feel like I'm just learning how to play the guitar. I mean, really learning to play the guitar

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 can embarrass myself very easily on guitar. It's funny because people say to me I can play anything; I'm God on the guitar. But I could make a big list of everything I can't play... I'm grateful that people don't notice that.

My 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I don't know of a guitar player that has only one guitar. They're never happy with one. I'm never happy with just one of them. I woke up and ended up with six, even if you can only play one at a time!

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

I grew up not really listening to guitar players. Especially when I was studying music, I was just interested in piano players and arrangers and composers; I came to playing in a band from the perspective of someone who never expected to play guitar in a band.

I 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.

Randy [ Rhoads] had small hands. Boy, could he play guitar. He became an even better guitar player after he died.

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

Learning the notes on the fretboard is key to any guitarist's development on the instrument, and [Guitar] Trainer HD is a neat way to get that info burned into your brain without having to carry a guitar with you everywhere you go. Pretty cool!

It became a bit of a challenge to make an album that is essentially quite alternative sounding, and has a lot of sounds that could be guitar - for instance on "Overjoyed," there's what sounds like guitar but is actually a lot of keys.

There were some initial instruments I had when I was young and made some trade-offs. Maybe a guitar I bought in a flea market. They weren't the greatest guitar but they would be cool to still have them. Other than that, not as a professional.

My mother was a very beautiful lady, I thought. She was very good to me. I guess - she died when I was nine and a half, but if she had lived I probably wouldn't be trying to play guitar. She wanted me to be known, but as something else. Not a guitar player.

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

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.

I even played bass for a while. Besides playing electric guitar, I'd also get asked to play some acoustic stuff. But, since I didn't have an acoustic guitar at the time, I used to borrow one from a friend so I could play folk joints.

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!

When I began, the guitar was en-closed in a vicious circle. There were no composers writing for the guitar, be-cause there were no virtuoso guitarists.

All the time I was playing the flute, the lines, the solos, the riffs, the construction, were based on my guitar skills. I did not play the flute to exploit its natural faculties, but I used it as a surrogate guitar.

There's two or three kids out there trying to make good music, and the rest of them sound like it's been strained through some kind of white toast or something. It all sounds just too neat and perfect, with no surprise to it at all. No story, no nothing. It's like building cars, like an assembly line. It doesn't sound like anything that came from a guitar.

Except for a few guitar chords, everything I've learned in my life that is of any value I've learned from women.

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 mean, the sound of an amplified guitar in a room full of people was so hypnotic and addictive to me, that I could cross any kind of border to get on there.

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.

It's just me and my guitar, and the rhythm's from there, and the poetry of life.

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

A guitar is just theoretically built wrong. Each string is an interval of fourths, and then the B string is off. Theoretically, that's not right, all the strings should be off.

A guitar has moonlight in it.

I was immediately taken with Geoff Muldaur's rich soulful voice, masterful phrasing and guitar playing when I first heard him.

Trey Spruance didn't want to tour for ages. And Dean Menta has always been our guitar-roadie during Angel Dust, and I remember him playing fantastically during soundchecks. During each gig, he was watching from the side of the stage, seeing Big Jim play stuff that he could play better.

There is still a very strong subculture of people who want to do great things on an instrument, and who are stimulated by hearing people who can. That's reassuring. But it's gonna take a person - and I don't know who this is - to come along and reinvent the guitar as a virtuosic instrument in a completely different realm than any of us have done, or anybody else in the past. That's the clincher. Maybe that will happen and maybe it won't.