Quotes & Sayings About Guitar

If you make it sound too much like a synth, it will just sound like a guitar part played on a synth. — Daisy Berkowitz

When I was 15 years old, my cousin and I formed a singing group called The Altaires. And, because we became the most popular singing group in the Tri-State area, the rest of the group convinced me I should play the guitar - even though I didn't own one! So what happened was, my stepfather actually made my first electric guitar for me for $23! — George Benson

A new study found that women think men holding a guitar are more attractive, even if they are not playing it. In a related story, guys with an accordion will die alone. — Jimmy Fallon

This PRS is perfect for anyone who wants an awesome quality, versatile, rockin' guitar at an affordable price. I love it; try it out! — Orianthi

But KISS inspired me personally to pick up a guitar and go for it. — Mike McCready

I wanted to learn how to do everything a person could do on a guitar. Of course, that was impossible. — David Bromberg

'Built This Pool' was an idea that I had for a song starting several years ago, and as we were in between takes of recording something, I was actually holding a guitar at the time, and I played this silly thing, and sang the lyrics to 'Built This Pool' kinda in the background. — Mark Hoppus

I like guitar. It just turned out that it's the instrument I learned to play. I have a lot of respect for it, and I'm learning more and more every day. For me, the classic band setup - guitars, drums, bass - will stay fresh forever. I don't know. I'm still into it. — Mac DeMarco

If you guys throw one more shoe or one more coin, I'm just going to leave my guitar next to my amp and there's going to be massive feed back for an hour. — Kurt Cobain

A man can never have too many pairs of sunglasses or too many guitars. — Richie Sambora

Those thinking Why, When, Where, Who are information providers; the one thinking "HOW" is the leader in solving the problem. — Vikrmn

When I lived in a little flat in Pimlico in 1981, I'd write in the hallway. As you walked in, there was a tiny little recess type thing, hardly a hallway, really, and I'd sit there writing songs with my guitar. — Paul Weller

"The Hallmark Sessions" is an extraordinary release. Breau plays beautiful chords (sounding a little like Johnny Smith in spots) and inventive single-note lines. It is remarkable that this music was not released until 2003, but a happy event that it was finally put out. This is a must for Breau fans and an important release for all jazz guitar lovers. — Scott Yanow

Catfish is not playing guitar no more, he's doing like a home-front thing. He had been in the business around ten years before I got in it, so I guess he's had enough of it. — Bootsy Collins

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. — Graham Coxon

I don't consider myself a skilled enough instrumentalist to be able to create the atmosphere that I want with just my guitar by myself. — Thalia Zedek

My grandfather gave me my first guitar, an old acoustic with palm trees and dancing girls painted on it. — Dan Fogelberg

My first band was an Argentinian folk group when I was 10. When I was 12 I had my electric guitar, and by the time I was 13, the Beatles came into the scene, and that was over. So I have a mixture of all these traditions, and I think that's who I am, a mixture of everything. — Gustavo Santaolalla

Sometimes I'll write without the guitar or the piano, but most of the time I'll be playing and just improvising some words. And when I get something that sounds good, a line with a story in it, I'll try and tease it out and figure out where the story is going. — John Darnielle

I 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 Weatherly

I'm fine with being thought of as a guitar player, and if I can get any recognition or respect for doing that, that's a pretty good thing for me. — Paul Weller

I'm tired of being around men all the time. I'm going to start a band called Skirt with three girls and I'll play the guitar and sing backing vocals in drag. I went window shopping when I was in New York, saw a lot of amazing dresses. — Brian Molko

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. — Alan Price

My son youngest son David's favorite song - he plays guitar - and he likes "Devil Pray." That's his favorite. — Madonna Ciccone

The history of music is mortal, but the idiocy of the guitar is eternal. — Milan Kundera

I've always dabbled on guitar, but never took lessons. — Adam Jones

Write great songs that sound amazing if sung and played on the piano or acoustic guitar. Always encourage sing-alongs! Be prolific! Say "Yes" to new collaborations because you never know where it could lead. — Wendy Starland

I'm very lazy when it comes to making the original sound. I don't go through amplifiers and different compressors and signal parts. I just grab something, whether its an old guitar or a children's toy that happens to be lying around, and record it straight into the computer. — Imogen Heap

Sold my guitar to the baker's son for a few crumbs and a place to hide. — Bob Dylan

It keeps me in touch with younger musicians who are constantly saying, 'Have you heard this new artist, or this new guitar player?' It keeps you reaching. — Gary Burton

I just loved classical music, but I also loved playing rock guitar, and I loved playing piano, so it was a natural thing that those things would merge at some point. — Trevor Rabin

When I was about 12, I had my first paying gig - 8 dollars to play rhythm guitar in a polka band. Pretty soon, I ended up playing in all the bars within driving distance of Abbott, Texas. — Willie Nelson

I had prostate cancer that, for me, was debilitating. I didn't touch a guitar for two years, but when I realized I was seeing the light at the end of the recovery tunnel and was going to live pain-free, I realized again that it was a fun little instrument to play. — Ronnie Montrose

There'd been an epidemic, the man had told him. Thirty people had died incandescent with fever, including the mayor. After this, a change in management, but the tuba's acquaintance had declined to elaborate on what he meant by this. He did say that twenty families had left since then, including Charlie and the sixth guitar and their baby. He said no one knew where they'd gone, and he'd told the tuba it was best not to ask. — Emily St. John Mandel

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. — Barry Mann

Age isn't a barrier to playing the bass, and I've definitely improved over the years, although maybe I'm not as flash as I once was. But looking back, I can't imagine a life without a guitar. — Suzi Quatro

I stuck with that size because I could bend the strings so well, and somewhere along the line I must have gotten it into my mind that I had small hands, so I was thinking I'd never be able to play a full-scale guitar, but I also felt like I was cheating or cutting corners. — John Fogerty

The rest of the band were basically friends, So it was me following them around and begging them to let me be in their band for two or three years. And they finally let me in on the harmonica, actually, and then the keyboards, and finally the guitar. — Jonny Greenwood

They say well begun half done; but Perseverance on the way down takes you up to a great end. — Vikrmn

All that falls is not bad. — Vikrmn

I've been arguing on the side of a dirt road with a petulant singer who's wearing a guitar on his back. This entire scene is a mess, and maybe we're a mess, too. But it's still him and still me, and there's still that feeling of possibility - the one that sparks like a Roman candle inside me as his lips touch mine. And it's a start. — Emery Lord

I get twitchy if I don't pick up a guitar or sit at the piano every now and then ... I have to do it; I don't have a choice. — Julian Lennon

I like the clubs because ... we have two or three acoustic guitars up there and we're not hard-core slamming or stomping through the music. We're singing it with intricate harmonies and really showing the craftsmanship. — Toby Keith

I always write from rhythm first, so if I need a song fast, I have to start there. Then I just threw some electric guitar at it. — Erin McKeown

If I'm going to buy a new guitar, I take it to a good 'hot' room, like a tiled bathroom, and listen to the wood. If tone comes off the neck, you can bet it's gonna sound beautiful through an amp — Richard Betts

I didn't really learn how to play guitar until I was in college. — James Vincent McMorrow

My guitar is not a thing. It is an extension of myself. It is who I am. — Joan Jett

My mother is a singer, my sisters all sing, my uncles are incredible singers and guitar players, so it's just kind of been like my habitat. — Bruno Mars

If he was a ghost in the life he remembered, Jeff thought, he was also a ghost in his present life, just the same way. Except, in all the fourteen years, just a couple of times. With Melody that first summer he had felt alive. On the beach on the island. And when he played the guitar. Most of the time, he thought, he practiced not being anybody. If you weren't anybody then nobody could - what? Hurt you or leave you behind? Make you unhappy? But then they couldn't make you happy either, could they? If you played it safe, then you kept safe. Jeff figured he was pretty good at keeping safe - he didn't even look in mirrors because he didn't want to see Melody's eyes. But one result of that was that Jeff didn't know anything about himself. And he thought, sitting in the little boat, alone on the creek, alone with the creek and the sky and the marshes, that he might want to know more. — Cynthia Voigt

Rhythms, beats, etc., are fundamentally central to my creative drive: my first instrument was the drums, nearly every band I have been involved in or at the helm of, is driven by rhythm, my band is driven entirely by rhythm, machine rhythm, and the purpose of the rock instrumentation is literally to speak the beats, to emulate the rhythms with guitars and bass, with very little articulation, and without being 'progressive'. — Justin Broadrick

There's a sound with Motley Crue, and it comes with Vince's voice, which is such an important part of the show, and Mick's guitar. And the way Tommy and me play together is an important part of it. — Nikki Sixx

I've sung since I talked, when I'm two, but what I sang was ballads, because it's very hard to do a dance track with your little acoustic guitar when you're a kid. — Gloria Estefan

How we approached this was I wanted this to be personal in a way. It's not a big, epic Hollywood score but really personal and intimate, and we thought guitar would be the perfect instrument for him because he's young and he has an undying spirit and all that stuff and we went on that feeling totally. — A.R. Rahman

I don't try to make the guitar sound like the harpsichord or lute. That makes you end up being like a bad copy. — David Russell

That was the reasoning behind learning to play bass, and then after that it was more like it was neat to play songs together - for me to play bass and for him to play guitar. — Tom Araya

I'm a bass player from way back and Paul is a guitar player and we've been in many bands. — Adam Jones

When the intellectual part of guitar playing overrides the spiritual, you don't get to extreme heights. — John Frusciante

Well 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 Fahey

Science can make a heart beat with ventilator, but there is only one power that makes it live, that is LOVE which is the purest form of FAITH. — Vikrmn

We've always described our sound as a bit more guitar driven than normal pop music. Kind of Pink in a boy band form. We've heard a few people say that so now we use it. I think Pink is amazing person to be compared to. — Liam Payne

I got into one Metallica record. That was about it. I never got into AC/DC or Black Sabbath or any of that. I was interested in the side of heavy metal that had interesting guitar ideas, but that was a very short-lived thing. — M. Ward

I am musical. I play guitar. — Matt Ryan

I have a very precise memory of the local train, the hot bricks and copper boxes filled with boiling water to warm us up. Someone in another compartment was playing the guitar. To the rhythm of the train's rocking movement, I heard the chorus "Porque yo to quiero, porque yo to quiero," and I traveled toward my Tonio telling myself, "Because I love you ... because I love you — Consuelo De Saint-Exupery

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. — Richard Pinhas

My interests are guitars, cars, and vacation. I've been playing guitar all my life. My dad was a professional guitarist, but I'm terrible, which lets me off the hook, so I just play for myself. — Josh Hartnett

Where I grew up, I could be a punk rocker and a jock. But in college, it became apparent that those two worlds didn't mix. When I brought my guitar back to school after Thanksgiving break, a friend handed me his bass and said, 'Listen to the Ramones.' — Jeff Ament

Eventually as a teenager, I was pulled up on stage by James Brown's saxophone player, Maceo Parker, during one of his concerts and scatted on his stage for 20 minutes. After I was done, Maceo's bass player got down on one knee as if he were proposing, took a string off of his bass guitar and coiled it up around my ring finger. He hushed the crowd and said into the microphone, "Wendy, from this day forward you are married to music. You have a gift from God. You must devote your life to using this gift or else you will deprive the world of something so special." I got the chills. — Wendy Starland

I'd like to know how to play the guitar. — Mario Vazquez

I started playing piano; I picked up a ukulele, and I loved it and kept playing that. I play a bit of guitar, and some African drums from back in the day. — Max Schneider

I played for anybody and everybody from the time I started playing guitar, when I was 10 or 11. — Janis Ian

I didn't know that people compared Bill Hicks and I but certainly I'm flattered if they do. I knew Bill a bit. We had dinner a couple of times and played guitar together once. I really tried to keep my distance from him professionally. — Marc Maron

On Sunday morning Mrs. Whitaker went to church. Her local church was St. James the Less, which was a little more "Don't think of this as a church, think of it as a place where like-minded friends hang out and are joyful" than Mrs. Whitaker felt entirely comfortable with, but she liked the vicar, the Reverend Bartholomew, when he wasn't actually playing the guitar. — Neil Gaiman

Man makes his own destiny. Despite being a woman, she makes Man, a Gentleman. — Vikrmn

I've played every instrument you could possibly think of for 10 minutes. So I'm mediocre at everything. I can play drums, guitar, piano, violin, saxophone, clarinet, flute ... Just not well. — Kat Dennings

I'm not good enough to be playin' much acoustic guitar onstage. Man, you gotta get so right; I mean, the tones, the feel, the sound. Plus, acoustic blues guitar is just that much harder on the fingers. — Johnny Winter

I got a lot more interested in songs that could hold up completely on their own, with just a guitar and voice. For some people that's easy to do, but I find it's really difficult. — Daniel Rossen

It may be a coincidence, but from the minute I took anti-depressants, I didn't pick up a guitar or a pen for seven years. — Adam Ant

The music defied classification. If I had been writing a
review of the show, I would have labeled it progressive,
guitar-driven rock 'n' roll. But the guitars made sounds guitars
didn't always make. Symphonic sounds. Sacred sounds.
The music dug in so deep you didn't hear it so much as feel
it, reminding me of a dream I used to have when I was a kid,
where I would be standing on a street corner, I would jump
into the air, flap my arms, and soar up into the sky.
That's the only way I could describe the music.
It was the sonic equivalent of flight. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

No two notes are ever the same volume. With the guitar, you really have to model in your mind this wider thing; you're trying to create the illusion of a bigger dynamic range. — Pat Metheny

My guitar was a loyal person to me. — Dave Mustaine

Playing guitar was one of my childhood hobbies, and I had played a little at school and at camp. My parents would drag me out to perform for my family, like all parents do, but it was a hobby - nothing more. — Bonnie Raitt

The guitar. Rubbing the gentle polish
On Every smooth contour.
On the lap. Knowing every curve
As the light shines from it.

On stage a planned metamorphosis
Takes places as the hours go by and the
Space is transformed to a concert hall.
The energetic nemesis has struck.

The risers are transformed into a stage
And black boxes turned into powerful
Pieces of sound equipment.
The spring is taut.

Backstage while pandemonium
Sweeps the hall and people
Crowd the arena as ants flow to a cake.

The stage is set, the
Instruments tuned and placed.
The musicians work out last minute
Kinks as the lights dim.

An intense force hits the spectators.
Energy is released in every form.
A power rage beyond comprehension. — David Morrell

The classical guitar has a dynamic to it unlike a regular acoustic guitar or an electric guitar. You know, there's times when you should play and there's times when you gotta hold back. It's an extremely dynamic instrument. — Steve Vai

I saw the Village as a place you could escape to, to express yourself. When I first went there, I wrote and performed poetry. Then I drew portraits for a couple of years. It took a while before I thought about picking up a guitar. — Richie Havens

Bicycles are almost as good as guitars for meeting girls. — Bob Weir

Work to live up to your dreams and fantasies; to hell with them who ask you to come back to reality. — Vikrmn

My guitar playing is a synthesis of traditional American acoustic style and Urban Pop and R&B. — John Oates

The one thing I've always done, because I like the sound of my guitar from where I sit - meaning not in front of it - so what I do is, I put microphones around my ears. I have them around my head, too. I don't know if it's a superstitious thing, but it's actually how I recorded my first album. — Kaki King

The most important part of any rock song is the guitar solo. — David Lee Roth

So I'll set a cycle in motion and pop it into record and I'll lay down a drum pattern, a bass line, a keyboard and guitar part, and once the groove is going I launch into the song and sing my song over the top. — Thomas Dolby

I can play the air guitar really, really well. — Jessie J.

You have to break your fingers to learn how to play guitar. — Ester Dean

Pegi just recorded "I Don't Want to Talk About," written by Danny Whitten, the original Crazy Horse guitar player and singer who's all over Early Daze, an album of songs from the beginning of Crazy Horse that I have been working on compiling recently. Danny was every bit the artist I am, but he died of a heroin OD in the early seventies. Every time I hear Pegi sing that song, it makes me tremendously sad. She sings it so beautifully, phrasing it to break my heart. She does it justice. You can see I have some unfinished business with Danny. — Neil Young

It's always great playing with other musicians. It's also a great situation where I'm the older guy, I've influenced generations of guitar players. — Ace Frehley

Although I have guitars all around and I pick themm up occasionally and write a tune and make a record, I don't really see myself as a musician. It may seem a funny thing to say. It's just like, I write lyrics amd I make up songs, but I'm not a great lyricist or songwriter or producer. It's when you put all these things together - that makes me. — George Harrison

The Majesty guitar symbolizes the very reason why I am so proud to be a Music Man artist. I had the idea for this guitar a couple of years ago but it is because of their innovative spirit and dedication to the art of guitar building that it is now a reality. I am so grateful that I am able to collaborate with the best guitar company on the planet and so incredibly proud that together we have created what is to me, the perfect musical instrument for guitar players. I really hope you get a chance to play one and am confident that you will feel the same! — John Petrucci

In 1972, I recorded Gumbo, an album that was both a tribute to and my interpretation of the music I had grown up with in New Orleans in the 1940s and 1950s. I tried to keep a lot of the little changes that were characteristic of New Orleans, while working my own funknology on piano and guitar. — Dr. John

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. — Kristen Wiig

Best Quote of the day: Don't just sit and read the Quote of the day; Implement it. — Vikrmn

You watch the country-music awards that they show on the television, and you see country music has reached about 1985. It's all huge processed drum sounds and chiming chorus guitars and programmed synths bobbling along in the background. — Andy Partridge