Quotes & Sayings About Guitar Sound

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

I think I could walk into any music shop anywhere and with a guitar off the rack, a couple of basic pedals and an amp I could sound just like me. There's no devices, customized or otherwise, that give me my sound. — David Gilmour

We tune differently, and we use some tricks. There's just the two of us for much of a concert, so we want a big sound. We do use some guitar effects, distortion and delay. Playing cello with distortion sounds so good. — Luka Sulic

She missed his voice, the music he played on his guitar, the sound of his laughter. And sex. yes, she missed that, too. Having the evenings and weekends free to whatever she wanted
something she had once cherished about being single
wasn't nearly as satisfying as doing those things with Javier.
But that's what it meant to love a military man. — Pamela Clare

The union and enlightenment experienced in Guitar Yoga will find natural expression in the music. Such music will be in accord with the Music of the Spheres, the fruit and flower and fragrance of the divine harmony of existence. The music will come from the heart, the soul, the very core of one's being. It will be the creative and sublime sound of the Gods, something from the beautiful Beyond, illuminating and inspiring, majestic and mystical. — David Cherubim

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. — Keith Richards

I was left with an urge to make the guitar sound like things it shouldn't be able to sound like. — Adrian Belew

The Telecaster has two sounds - a good one and a bad one. — Jimi Hendrix

A trumpet sounds pretty much like a trumpet, and that's true of a lot instruments; pianos sound like pianos, but there's something about the guitar - the range of possibilities is much broader. — The Edge

A year or so earlier I had been to the Sky River Rock Festival in rural Washington, where a dosen stone-broke freaks from Seattle Liberation Front had assembled a sound system that carried every small note of an acoustic guitar - even a cough or the sound of a boot drooping on the stage - to half-deaf acid victims huddled under bushes a half mile away.
But the best technicians available to the National DAs' convention in Vegas apparently couldn't handle it. Their sound system looked like something Ulysses S. Grant might have triggered up to addres his troops during the Siege of Vicksburg. The voices from up front crackled with a fuzzy, high-pitched urgency, and the delay was just enough to keep the words disconcertingly out of phaze with the speaker's gestures. (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, p. 73) — Hunter S. Thompson

There are two kinds of music. One comes from the strings of a guitar, the other from the strings of the heart. One sound comes from a chamber orchestra, the other from the beating of the heart's chamber. One comes from an instrument of graphite and wood, the other from an organ of flesh and blood. This loftier music I speak of tonight is more pleasing than the notes of the most gifted composers, more moving than a marching band, more harmonious than a thousand voices joined in hymn and more powerful than all the world's percussion instruments combined. That sweet sound of love. — Michael Jackson

I can draw with sound. That's the most useful thing I learned in terms of what my craft is ... The arrangements were mine. They were little lines and stuff that I had written myself ... And I was locked into this idea that vocals didn't count, melodies didn't count, songwriting craftsmanship didn't count. The only thing that counted was high arching guitar solos. — Linda Ronstadt

Scattered among these things are reminders that sound once existed: a metronome, a drumming pad, a guitar pick, a trumpet mouthpiece, a music stand, a tuning fork, a block of rosin ... The older instruments bear the marks of those who have already played them, the scuffs and bites and dents that are the mysterious scars of sound. In their midst the house hangs, tenuous and enveloping, a sounding board waiting to be struck. — Geoffrey O'Brien

No sound system. No band. No guitar. No entertainment. No cushioned chairs. No heating or air-con. Nothing but the people of God and the word of God. And strangely, that's enough. God's Word is enough for millions of believers who gather in house churches ... Jungles ... Rainforests, and middle-eastern cities. But is his Word enough for us? — David Platt

I don't even think whether I play the blues or not, I just play whatever feels right at the moment. I also will use any gadget or device that I find that helps me achieve the sort of sound on the guitar that I want to get. — David Gilmour

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. — Merle Haggard

I know as soon as we hit the sweet spot, an intangible instant when the music gains control of fluttering wings to take real flight - soaring, swooping, diving and rising in the small studio. No single one of us is in control. The wall of sound is its own thing - lifted, weight shared, by five pairs of hands. I shake hair from closed eyes just because I need to move. If I let the pressure build and build and keep it in my hands, in the guitar, I'll explode. We carve out places for the verses, the chorus repetitions, and the coda. We line the edges of sonic space with rhythm and melody and stand Scope's sharp samples at each corner. — Emma Trevayne

Paint pictures with sound. First, find your white-the deepest, roundest sound you can play on the guitar. Then, find your black-which is the most extreme tonal difference from white you can play. Now, just pick the note where you've got white, pick it where you've got black, and then find all those colors in between. Get those colors down, and you'll be able to express almost any emotion on the guitar.? — Les Paul

In Utero is a testament to the artistic vision of Kurt Cobain. It's kind of a weird record, and it's strangely beautiful at the same time. And if you look at Kurt's paintings and his drawings - he even did a sculpture for me - it's a rising, tortured-spirit person. It's kind of weird. It's done well, but it's like what Dave was saying about having your own sound. Kurt was a great songwriter. He knew he had a good ear for a hook [and was] a great singer, great guitar player, and In Utero is a good representation of what he liked in art and how he expressed himself. — Krist Novoselic

A Strat was a thing of wonder .. when I was 14 or 15, the Shadows were a big influence, and they had the first Strats that came to England. I like to play all kinds of guitars, but I wasn't getting the sound I really wanted until I got a Stratocaster — Mark Knopfler

In recording, you're trying to make something work sonically - getting the right inflection on the right guitar sound - and maybe a part that would be musically great doesn't sound as cool. — Beck

A good player can make any guitar sound good. — Mike Bloomfield

I played 'Eruption' two times for the record, and we kept the one that seemed to flow ... there's a mistake at the top end of it whenever I hear it, I always think, Man I could've played it better ... but I like the way it sounds. I'd never heard a guitar sound like that before ... — Eddie Van Halen

I like the sound of a Silvertone amp for myself. It's kind of cleaner guitar sounds when necessary, maybe a little less metal-sounding. But it really doesn't matter what amp I play through; it's really the way I voice chords and play guitar, how I strike the strings. — Brian Bell

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. — Brian Eno

And he discovered, finally, the source of the honey-sweet sound.
The sound was music.
The sound was King Phillip playing his guitar and singing for his daughter, the Princess Pea, every night before she fell asleep.
Hidden in a hole in the wall of the princess's bedroom, the mouse listened with all his heart. The sound of the King's music made Despereaux's soul grow large and light inside of him.
Oh," he said, "it sounds like heaven. It smells like honey. — Kate DiCamillo

Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It's the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them. — Brian Eno

There were times I used to go to parties when I was, you know, like 15-, 16-years-old, and I'd always bring my guitar, and all my friends would be like, sing one of the Smokey songs. And everything I sang was his music, and I could sound just like him. — Teena Marie

Every demo I do has a mandolin or resonator on it - some element of the bluegrass or classic country world that I grew up listening to and that first drew me in. And then I always try to find somewhere for a bluesy guitar sound, because that's also what I love. Musically, I'm always finding my way home. — Hunter Hayes

When I produce someone's record I have to remember it's their record..no matter what I bring to it..er, sometimes that's not too easy It is a responsibility made less easy by people I work with encouraging me to play guitar on their record ... A soon as I start playing guitar on someone's record it inevitably starts to sound like me ... not always a good thing ... — Robin Guthrie

I'm on this eternal quest to get the best guitar sound in the world, but my vision of what is 'the best' changes every time I go into the studio. Sometimes my goal is to make my guitar jump out, and sometimes I want it to lay back. — James Hetfield

I sometimes feel a bit embarrassed to play guitar. There's something - I don't want to sound ungrateful - but there's something very old-fashioned and traditional about it. You meet kids today whose grandparents were in punk bands. It's very old and traditional, but then, so is an orchestra and so is a string section. — Jonny Greenwood

I've always been obsessed with drums. They fascinate me. Any other instrument - nothing. I play acoustic guitar a bit. But it's always been drums first and foremost. I don't reckon on this Jack-of-all-trades thing. I thing that felling is a lot more important than technique. It's all very well doing a triple paradiddle - but who's going to know you've done it? If you play technically you sound like everybody else. It's being original that counts. — John Bonham

Sometimes guitar riffs get repeated over and over ("vamping," in the lingo of musicians), but generally there is a soloist proving variation that runs above that background, lest the song sound monotonous. Philip Glass's minimalist compositions (such as the soundtrack to 'Koyaanisqatsi') deviate from much of the classical music that preceded them, with much less obvious movement than, say, the Romantic-era compositions that his work seems to rebel against, yet his works, too, consist not only of extensive repetition but also of constant (though subtle) variation. Virtually every song you've ever heard consists of exactly that: themes that recur over and over, overlaid with variations. — Gary F. Marcus

This is going to sound crazy, but I can hear music in my head. I can imagine a piano or a guitar playing, and I can sort of think out ... — Ryan Adams

Because I don't play guitar any more, African harmonies and rhythms have been an inspiration to me. I love the raw origin of the sound. It complements my voice and words naturally. — Cat Stevens

I loved the idea of recording. The idea of sound-on-sound-recording captured me as a young kid, and once I realized what it was I had an epiphany. Before I was even playing the guitar, I would create these lists of how I would record things and overdub them, like Led Zeppelin song, 'I could put this guitar on this track ... ' and so on. — Steve Vai

He played the opening bars again, opening a door for her, inviting her to join. She started quietly, almost voiceless, only a thin string of sound weaving herself into his tune, as if her voice were just another string on the guitar between his fingers. She had to be careful, so no one saw the changes on her face. But she didn't want to be careful; she couldn't be careful. He played and she sang to him, and inside her more and more blocks of ice began to melt, cracking and falling into the frozen sea between them. She sang of all the things that were happening to her and him, the world that collapsed over both of them, the things that might be in store, if only they dared to believe it was possible. — David Grossman

Booker T. Jones sounds more pithy and forceful than ever on "Potato Hole" ... Mr. Jones still jabs terse, unhurried melodies that sound as if he knows the lyrics but would never tell. Where the M.G.'s suavely underplayed their aggression, the rockers' multiple-guitar attack, with distortion and feedback, gives the music teeth. — Jon Pareles

If God had a stethoscope, and if He held it up to this part of the dreary world to check for a heartbeat, I hope these are the sounds He'd hear: the sound of boots stomping rhythms out of the dust. The sounds of happy squeals and laughter when people spin out, nearly dizzy from joy. The sound of a scratchy voice, a thumping guitar, a plucky violin. That's what pure joy sounds like. Sometimes that's when I miss my mama most. Not just when I'm sad, but when I'm happy... and I can't share that happiness with her. — Natalie Lloyd

Jeff Beck is probably my favorite and biggest influence on the guitar. Touring with him in 2010 was such a milestone. I used to show up early every day just to hear his sound check, which sometimes lasted an hour. — Gary Hoey

Surf music is actually just the sound of the waves played on a guitar: that wet, splashy sound. — Dick Dale

We sat side by side on the swings. The creaking sound they made seemed sexier to me than a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo. — Ryu Murakami

Joao Gilberto on guitar could read a newspaper and sound good. — Miles Davis

If the guitar synthesizer is really going to stand as a synthesizer on its own, it needs to develop a more characteristic sound; I don' think it's gotten there yet. — Andy Summers

When I first played the guitar without plugging it into an amplifier, the people at Fender were blown away. They couldn't believe the sound. I said, 'See, gentlemen, the world is no longer flat.' — Dick Dale

My favorite thing about guitar, and the thing that always drew me to it when I was first learning to play it, was those moments when you think you know what it might sound like, but you don't, and then you hit it, and it's a total surprise. You hear it with really fresh ears. Alternate tunings, for me, they give that back. — Charlie Worsham

If you have a great-sounding guitar that's a quality instrument and a good amp, and you know how to make the guitar talk, that's the key. It starts with the guitar and knowing what it should sound and feel like. — Eddie Van Halen

Absolutely, all guitars are different. You can go into a store and grab five guitars, all the same model, and even though they look identical they're not identical. They play differently, they feel a bit different and they sound slightly different. — John McLaughlin

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. — Daniel Rossen

I don't know whether it was his (Charlie Christian's) melodic lines, his sound or his approach, but I hadn't heard anything like that before. He sounded so good and it sounded so easy, so I bought me a guitar and an amplifier and said now I can't do nothing but play! Really, welding was my talent, I think, but I sort of swished it aside. — Wes Montgomery

Well, you know it was so different from when you rehearsed. You're out there with your guitar and trying to get a sound, but it doesn't sound anything like what you expect! — Jonathan Richman

Yeah. I started using them [SDD-3000s] shortly after first working with Edge on The Unforgettable Fire. Basically, I stole his sound. It wasn't a complicated rig: just a guitar he liked through a Korg SDD-3000 digital delay into a Vox. Three components, mono - that's it. The great thing about the Korgs is its three-position level switch, which lets you hit the amp with about 10 extra dB. It's more overdriven than if you just plugged the guitar straight into the amp, even when it's on bypass. But a lot of the guitar sounds on Achtung Baby were recorded through a Korg A3 effects processor. — Daniel Lanois

In my case, I am improvising with existing sound files. I use an MSP patch that a friend of mine made, and you have to improvise when you use this patch. I don't use a guitar in performance anymore. — Christian Fennesz

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

That it's a lot harder to make a keyboard sound not-cheesy than a guitar. — Julian Casablancas

Michael Bloomfield was the antithesis of a collector ... he didn't care how old a guitar was; all he wanted was something that sounded good when played it ... and he cared nothing about the collectibility of an instrument ... his philosophy was "A good player can make any guitar sound good" ... to Michael, a guitar was just a tool ... — Nick Gravenites

A cello can sound like so many instruments, but it's only one, you know, like a guitar; it has percussive qualities. It can sing like the violin, you know, like a voice. — Luka Sulic

If the wind and rain could play guitar, they would sound a lot like Doc Watson — Greg Brown

Don't be precious about anything-much less a certain guitar sound. There is always another interesting sound or effect just waiting to be discovered. — Robin Guthrie

I like The Smiths as well. They took a cue from The Buzzcocks. They have jangly guitars instead of distorted guitars. All the Manchester bands have a character about them. The Stone Roses and The Smiths and all that. Even if you don't like them, they have a certain original sound. — Steve Diggle

Black Sabbath - one of the world's universal language of music. I felt proud, for three or four minutes of my life combining my voice with Tony Iommi's guitar sound. — Henry Rollins

So I went ahead and made me a guitar. Igot me a cigar box, I cut me a round hole in the middle of it, takeme a little piece of plank, nailed it onto that cigar box, and I gotme some screen wire and I made me a bridge back there and raised itup high enough that it would sound inside that little box, and got mea tune out of it. I kept my tune and I played from then on. — Lightnin' Hopkins

I clicked the gate shut and slipped down the alley. Through one fence after another, I caught glimpses of people in their dining rooms and living rooms, eating and watching TV dramas. Food smells drifted into the alley through kitchen windows and exhaust fans. One teenaged boy was practicing a fast passage on his electric guitar, with the volume turned down. In a second floor window, a tiny girl was studying at her desk, an earnest expression on her face. A married couple in a heated argument sent their voices out to the alley. A baby was screaming. A telephone rang. Reality spilled out into the alley like water from an overfilled bowl - as sound, as smell, as image, as plea, as response. — Haruki Murakami

James Ralston, my guitar player, has performed with Tina Turner for about 22 years. Jim Hanson on bass has played with Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell and Bruce Springsteen, and they're fantastic musicians and amazing singers they get a really cool vocal sound together. — Vonda Shepard

The guitar, by its very nature, the nature of its sound, by the soft nuance of its powerful and ancient voice, by the magic of the tone, goes directly to the part of oneself where love is felt. When I hear the sound of the guitar, it goes to some part inside of me that opens the door that holds feelings of love and everything that is beautiful which lives inside of me. — Pepe Romero

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. — Matt Tong

You think back to Tele players, and James Burton was the one who started it all. He inspired Roy Nichols (guitar for Merle Haggard & the Strangers), Don Rich (guitar for Buck Owens & the Buckaroos), and guys like that to push the envelope and expand on that sound ... I really identify with that kind of thinking ... those guys to me are the reason why any of us do this.. — Brad Paisley

It's like I'll sit down and put my hands on the piano or the guitar, and then I'll hear a sound or I'll feel a chord that will resonate and then I'll get something happening in my voice. My voice is like a car that I get into and drive but I don't know where I'm going. And I record everything. And often, I sort of get into a state, a creative state that is, where I'm just feeling around melodically, and playing things off the top of my head. Then I go back and listen to it and for the first time, hear what I just did. It's like Elvis has left the building while the thing is happening. — Beth Nielsen Chapman

The multiple choices and possibilities of daily life are the music we dance to. They are like strings on a guitar. Strum them and you create a pleasing sound. A harmonic. But then start adding strings. Ten strings, a hundred strings, a thousand, a million. Because they multiply! — Stephen King

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. — Eric Clapton

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

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'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

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

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

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

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

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

The flanger setting ... makes it sound as if the chord is being chewed over thoughtfully by a large genie accustomed to telling long, implausible stories — Tim Brookes

I knew absolutely nothing about recording. I had this four-track recorder, and I'd plug my electric guitar right into it, which sounded real bad. I moved any fader that made a drastic change in sound. I thought that was cool - that it was communicating something. I didn't have the skills to do anything subtle. It was just like screaming. — Bill Callahan

To be honest, I'm one of the least-technical guitar players around. I just want a guitar to feel good and sound good. That's it, period. — Scott Ian

I try to become a singer. The guitar has always been abused with distortion units and funny sorts of effects, but when you don't do that and just let the genuine sound come through, there's a whole magic there. — Jeff Beck

There was a low growling sound and the Munstermobile came gliding up out of the parking garage, dripping water from its gleaming surface like some lantern-eyed leviathan rising from the depths. There were still a few dents and dings in it, but the broken glass had all been replaced, and the engine sounded fine.
Okay, I'm not like a car fanatic or anything - but the guitar riff from "Bad to the Bone" started playing in my head. — Jim Butcher

It's amazing. It's actually build from old Siemens Telefunken transistors from the 60ties. There is like 10 in there. It's the most powerful distortion you can have. It does not only do distortion, it does so many weird things. You can't control it, it's sound different all the time. But it's an endless source for fantastic sounds. For example the track "Transit" is entirely made with this box. You have to put the guitar sound in. It's like a pedal. — Christian Fennesz

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. — Jimmy Page

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. — B.B. King

It wasn't like the other songs. There was no story, no conversation. This was just the feeling, without words or pictures, and it had nothing to do with Luther or his clean, stinging guitar. It was the sound of being outside, of being alien. It was the pulse that ran under everything and never let you forget that you were strange, that the world hurt just to touch. — Brenna Yovanoff

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

I'm starting to play all the melodies with kind of keyboard sound but playing it from the bass guitar. — Tom Jenkinson

Nothing is more beautiful than the sound of the guitar. — Frederic Chopin

Chicken began to cry then or seemed to cry, to weep or seemed to weep, until they heard the sound of a grown man weeping, an old man who slept on a charred mattress, whose life savings in tattoos had faded to a tracery of ash, whose crotch hair was sparse and gray, whose flesh hung slack on his bones, whose only trespass on life was a flat guitar and a remembered and pitiful air of "I don't know where it is, sir, but I'll find it, sir," and whose name was known nowhere, nowhere in the far reaches of the earth or in the far reaches of his memory, where, when he talked to himself, he talked to himself as Chicken Number Two. — John Cheever

As long as Nelson was socked into baseball statistics or that guitar or even the rock records that threaded their sound through all the fibers of the house, his occupation of the room down the hall was no more uncomfortable than the persistence of Rabbit's own childhood in an annex of his brain; but when the stuff with hormones and girls and cars and beers began, Harry wanted out of fatherhood. — John Updike

When I got my first Marshall amp, it was so empowering. No one ever forgets their first Marshall amp if you're a guitar player pursuing a big powerful sound. I mean, no one ever forgets their first Marshall amp. — Kirk Hammett

That is the true joy of being a solo artist. I can do whatever I want. I can go wherever I want. I can show up with my guitar and my song, and it can sound a hundred different ways. That's the freedom of being on your own. The flipside is: That's you on the cover. If it sucks, it's your fault. — Jenny Lewis

In general, we like to play as a band - guitar, piano, and voice. We also tour with a bass player, a drummer, and somebody who plays keyboard and guitar. We try to play all of our parts and flesh it out to get a lush sound, while also keeping the energy of a three-piece punk act. We want to be the best of all possible worlds. — Andrew Dost

I was just a music lover who wondered what it would sound like if Otis Redding strapped on a guitar and played in a punk band. That's it. — Benjamin Booker

Time becomes a stutter-the space between drumbeats, splintered into fragments, and also endlessly long, as long as soaring guitar notes that melt into one another, as full as the dark mass of bodies around me. I feel like the air downstairs has gone to liquid, to sweat and smell and sound, and I have broken apart in it. I am wave: I am pulled into the everything. I am energy and noise and a heartbeat going boom, boom, boom, echoing the drums. — Lauren Oliver

It's one thing having a great song, but I think for me if you take it to the next level ... say you had a guitar and a vocal, and the song was amazing but the vocalist wasn't that great and it just was a guitar and vocal acoustic track, switching that to something like an amazing voice singing the exact same song with the instrumentation being really nice and lush or unique in some way and interesting and diverse ... I think it's all about the instrumentation and textures in the sound. — Flume

It is very important to me that my songs can sound amazing with a big band or orchestra, but just as powerful and touching with just me and my guitar. — Tessanne Chin