Best 1530 quotes in «guitar quotes» category

The kids called me King of the Surf Guitar. I surfed sunup to sundown.

The main reason for the break was a combination of travel and going back to university, which drew me into theatre more than music. I did stuff on acoustic guitar when I was traveling, filed it away and made notes, without it being musical notation. Just taped the odd thing, did a sketch, stuck it on a cassette. I thought at some point, I'll go back to it. Some of it I did use in '84-'85 when I started working in the Free Theatre in Christchurch. So it might seem like I had given up after the Pin Group, but I just went into a different avenue.

The main things to rebel against - over-production, too much technology, overthinking. It's a spoiled mentality; everything is too easy. If you want to record a song, you can buy Pro Tools and record four hundred guitar tracks. That leads to overthinking, which kills any spontaneity and the humanity of the performance.

The Mandolin is the bottom four strings of the guitar, backwards...so a person with dyslexia has no problem learning to play the Mandolin.

The Marshall guitar amplifier doesn't just get louder when you turn it up. It distorts the sound to produce a whole range of new harmonics, effectively turning a plucked string instrument into a bowed one. A responsible designer might try to overcome this limitation - probably the engineers at Marshall tried, too. But that sound became the sound of, among others, Jimi Hendrix. That sound is called electric guitar.

The media says that equality for women has arrived, but if you look around, you still don't see girls playing guitars and having success with it.

The most important part of my religion is to play guitar.

The most important part of any rock song is the guitar solo.

The most obvious thing you can't do with a guitar synthesizer is to really sound like a guitar.

The music I want to hear in my head sounds somewhere between Jimi Hendrix and Massive Attack. It's not really like my dad, but there will always be similarities because we have the same vocal cords, and I learnt the guitar the way he taught me.

The music that really moves me is music that's written by people where there isn't a lot of money and they're really singing with just their voice and a guitar about their feelings and about their life. Their poetry is relatively simple, in the sense that it's about their soul in jeopardy.

The music of Hendrix wakes people up to their possibilities. It's more than just dreaming about being a guitar hero.

The musings are the same I believe the fire to create burns so heavily that I am never far from a guitar or a fountain pen.

The one thing I do have is good ears. I don't mean perfect pitch, but ears for picking things up. I developed my ear through piano theory, but I never had a guitar lesson in my life, except from Eric Clapton off of records.

Then Bono arrived, and he meant to play the guitar, but he couldn't play very well, so he started to sing. He couldn't do that either. But he was such a charismatic character that he was in the band anyway, as soon as he arrived. I was in charge for the first five minutes, but as soon as Bono got there, I was out of a job.

Then, you know, the other more-traditional role of the producer in, like, the kind of Quincy Jones sense is kind of part arranger. So you're coming up with, like, these - you hear these songs that are quite bare-bones, and you dream up what's the band doing? What's the rhythm section doing? What's the guitars, strings, pianos - that sort of thing. It's almost like a little toolbox.

The only two things in life that make it worth livin' / Is guitars that tune good and firm feelin' women

The only time I made money was when I licensed my own solo guitar record, which sold maybe seven copies.

The only time it dominates is during a solo, or when we play a low blues and I put figures in behind Eric's vocals. There's never any real problem fitting guitar and organ together.

The only thing I ever really wanted was a Strat .. I started playing guitar after seeing Jimi Hendrix on TV the day he died...then I got Deep Purples' Fireball album which was also a big influence .. I have a collection of more than 200 of them that includes Strats from every year since March 1954 - the first month the Strat was made

There are a lot of people who can do it on the guitar and sing at the same time, but I think what is harder is bass players that can play the bass and sing.

The real lost souls don't wear their hair long and play guitars. They have crew cuts and trained minds, sign on for research in biological warfare, and don't give their parents a moment's worry.

There are a lot of influences from different countries in my music. For example, I chose the guitar in my music, I think that it is a feminine instrument, so when I do not sing, the music expresses my voice.

There are so many good guitarists out there, I am by no means a very good guitar player.

There are many excellent guitar players but I have to say Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton are still at the top! There are many imitators but very few genuine articles. There is so much more to playing than a fast blur of notes, like feeling and emotion from the soul. It's like punctuating a sentence and knowing when to lay back and not fill up all the space. Those are the things I tried to teach my son Tim when he began playing.

There are no rules or certain methods. I usually start with the guitar or piano and sing melodies over the chords. The lyrics seem to be born out of that, and the fact that it's still a mystery to me is my favorite part.

There are other tracks that are more reliant upon the beat. Like nobody's going to sit there and play "Harlem Shake" on the guitar!

There are some people who do great stuff singing and playing fiddle at the same time and doing that kind of arrangement. But I think [I don't do that] partially because I'm still a loner on the guitar and banjo.

There comes a point with any collaboration like that where you start having other interests creatively. I was moving in one direction musically, and as a guitar player, Mark wanted to move in another direction. That was essentially the reason we broke up.

There are times where I would keep three typewriters on a table, and I'd have three complete thoughts going. With computers, you make folders, files - I don't know about those things. I have sheaves of paper polluted with words and paragraphs. I found it a good tool for me. And it keeps your hands strong for guitar playing.

There are two kinds of music. One comes from the strings of a guitar, the other from the strings of the heart.

The records that I like, they have life and warmth and soul in them. Like the slap back on Scotty Moore's guitar on 'Mystery Train.' You're not gonna get that in a computer. You're gonna want a live room, you're gonna wanna bounce the tape, you're gonna want real musicians, in a room, vibin' off of each other.

There is no finer sonic-producing weapon for a guitar slayer than a hand crafter Gibson masterpiece.

There is no way that I could pinpoint just one person. When I first started, I was listening to Randy Rogers quite a bit, and I was also pretty big into Josh Grider back then. I remember going to a lot of Kevin Fowler shows early, and Eli Young Band was another one of the groups I listened to a lot of when I was learning to write and play guitar.

There once was a girl who found herself dead. She peered over the ledge of heaven and saw that back on earth her sister missed her too much, was way too sad, so she crossed some paths that would not have crossed, took some moments in her hand shook them up and spilled them like dice over the living world. It worked. The boy with the guitar collided with her sister. "There you go, Len," she whispered. "The rest is up to you.

There is something about guitars—maybe something magical—when played right, which evokes past, mysterious, barely-conscious sentiments, both individual and universal.

There's a very old recording maxim that goes, 'Distance makes depth.' I've used that a hell of a lot-whether it's tracking guitars or the whole band. People are used to close-miking amps, but I'd have a mic out around the back, as well, and then balance the two. Also, you shouldn't have to use EQ in the studio if the instruments sound right. You should be able to get the right tones simply with the science of microphone placement.

There's a lot of good rappers in England at the moment. There's a lot of good dance acts. A lot of good, young guitar acts. I think a lot of groups came from that dole culture of the late 80's/early 90's - it's not as easy now. I think there's a dearth of working class bands.

There seemed to be a sense about Sarah [Harmer] even back then.She was obviously a quick study. I remember going to the Harmer farmhouse and sitting around the pool, and Sarah had a guitar. Maybe I knew four chords, but she already knew five. After doing 600 gigs that week, I would sing with her in a ragged voice, and she had the voice of a bird.

There's just certain styles of playing that you do play in your own way. Maybe it's in the way your fingers bend, for all I know. And so whenever you pick up the guitar it's not so much the sound of the instrument itself, it's like the ting that you add onto it-the attitude.

There's just not a lot of guys around playing like that these days; a lot of steel players are plugging into stomp boxes, trying to sound like Jeff Beck on a steel guitar.

There's a weird period of learning how to play guitar where your fingers are constantly messed up a handful.

There's just no stopping those girls with guitars.

There's only one Sabbath guitarist and he is the architect for everything, Tony Iommi.

There' something about universal truths with the simplicity of the acoustic guitar. You can take it anywhere and it helps me reach listeners of all ages and walks of life.

There's something about the rawness of the live thing, there's no rhythm guitars behind the solo, nothing other than what you hear the people playing at that moment. It's exciting, it's about the performance.

There's something about guitars, they're just so big, you know what I mean? You're just like, 'Ugh!' It just seems so overwhelming. And the ukulele is, like, the opposite of overwhelming.

There's one piece of advice my dad gave me when he dropped me off at college. He said, "You've got the talent. You can sing and play guitar. That doesn't make you any better than anyone else.".

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.

There's so much to be said for making your guitar sound like a synthesizer and try to make your drummer sound like a drum machine.