Quotes & Sayings About Guitar Strings

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

I learned everything by ear and played all the different instruments. So then I was able to find a guitar. That was, like, in the seventh grade. And then I didn't know how to put my fingers on all the different strings, so I had to figure out how to do it upside down and backwards, and I still play that way today. — Dick Dale

I started playing the guitar when I was 14. I'm not superstitious about guitars, but I do need strings to be old because that's part of my sound, and I don't like steel strings. — Jose Gonzalez

She reminds him of every good day he's ever had. Every summer spent in fields of grass. Every sunrise. Every sunset. She tastes like dew and smells like light. And when she speaks, it's like someone slowly plucking the strings of a guitar, a sadly beautiful song starting to play, all his own. And he loves her. — Pleasefindthis

Basically, Sam Phillips recorded Bill Haley, Johnny Cash, and all those other Memphis guys; Chuck Berry played the top two strings; Elvis appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show above the waist; the Beatles made all the girls squirm by singing about wanting to hold their "hands"; Ray Davies got lost in a sunset; Pete Townshend smashed his guitar; Brian Wilson heard magic in his head and made it come out of a studio; the Rolling Stones urinated on a garage door; and then (skipping a bit) you've got Joey Levine and Chapman-Chinn and Mott the Hoople and Iggy and the Runaways and KISS and the Pink Fairies and Rick Nielsen and Jonathan Richman and Johnny Ramone and Lemmy and the Young brothers and Cook and Jones and Pete Shelley and Feargal Sharkey and Rob Halford ... and Foghat. You get what I'm saying. It didn't happen in a vacuum, but it did happen, and now here we are in the aftermath. — Frank Portman

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 consider the electric guitar to be like a drum with strings. It became the drum of the Baby Boom generation. And the drum has always been the center of the tribe, a new electronic tribe. — John Trudell

I write to the beat and let life play the guitar strings — Macklemore

You be careful. I'd take you myself, but I'm busy as a cat in a mess of guitar strings. — Stephen King

The two of us were everything that we needed to be to one another as we sat behind those strings. — Courtney Giardina

I met my manager when I was 17, when I didn't have enough money to buy a set of guitar strings. There are not very many people who are looking out for you and being in business with you when you're at that stage. And it's not in my nature to think that success as a musician makes you any different from anybody else. — Johnny Marr

I Imagine Them

turning some dog-eared page
tapping out a drum beat on the dash
sorting the laundry
digging for a matching sock
buried in deep pockets
breaking an egg on the side of a bowl
fingering guitar strings

Where are they now?

tenderly holding a pen to paper
furiously moving through air
in concert
with your conversation
resting assuredly on the back
of a chair

oh to be the steering wheel
or the spoon
to have your palms
pressed solidly upon me
the full fan of your fingers
curved to the slope
of my shoulders
oh to be warmed
to be wrapped
in hope
to be healed
by the laying on
of your hands — Nancy Boutilier

Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark, what discord follows! — William Shakespeare

I started doing all kinds of weird stuff on the guitar, which became part of my playing. I started doing harmonics and tapping on the guitar and pulling off strings and doing all this weird stuff that no one had ever done 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

Every guitarist I would cross paths with would tell me that I should have a flashy guitar, whatever the latest fashion model was, and I used to say, 'Why? Mine works, doesn't it? It's a piece of wood and six strings, and it works.' — Angus Young

What an unfortunate instrument the guitar is! An instrument of such great nobility, a genuine monarch of music
reduced to a pitiful lump of wood with six strings, constantly abused by people with no ear and no voice. — Sergei Lukyanenko

Maybe its a case of one guitar feeling a certain way to the hands that makes one subsequently move differently over the strings, but my intent is always to wring the maximum emotional resonance out of the object in hand. — Gary Lucas

For an electric guitarist to solo effectively on an acoustic guitar you need to develop tricks to avoid the expectation of sustain that comes from playing electrics. Try cascades, for example. Drop arpeggios over open strings, and let the open strings sing as you pick with your fingers. It's kind of a country style of playing, but it works very well in-between heavily strummed parts and fingered lead lines. — Pete Townshend

I've always loved Ibanez guitars, and in particular 7 strings. — Paul Wardingham

I don't play the guitar. That would mean I wanted people to hear it. I just strum a few strings to make myself feel better. It fills my silence. — Annie Hughes

I just couldn't take school seriously: I had this guitar neck with four frets which I kept hidden under the desk. It had strings on it so I would practice my chord shapes under the desk and that's about all I did at school. — Alvin Lee

Grab a guitar, put some kind of strings on it, a banjo string, then a violin string, then a guitar string, tune it any way you want, and make some noise, and see what you get. And work on it until you get something that you think is interesting. That's all there is to art for me. — Buffy Sainte-Marie

Bracelets with white symbols?" Michael made the question casual; in fact, he bent his head and concentrated on tuning his guitar, not that it needed it. Every note sounded perfect as it whispered out of the strings. "Do you remember?"
"No." She felt a pure burst of something that wasn't quite panic, wasn't quite excitement. "Does that mean they have Protection?"
He hesitated for about a second, just long enough for her to know he was surprised. "You mean condoms?" he asked. "Doesn't everybody? — Rachel Caine

I was a big fan of Jim Hall as well. I liked his comping style, his accompanying. And that he played, generally, four note chords, the top four strings of the guitar. — Gary Burton

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

For me, anything can be music! I can get huge enjoyment and be moved totally by the purity and perfection of some Renaissance polyphony, but equally I can feel emotion in the expectant hum of a big old guitar amp just before the strings are hit. — Steven Price

The guitar to me, from the classical/gut-string guitar right through to Hendrix, et cetera, has all the range [of sound]. Within those six strings it is incredible what one can get sound-wise. It's just down to imagination, really. — Jimmy Page

I like to start by wiggling my fingers on top of guitar strings. — Zacky Vengeance

All gut strings. That's just the first kind of guitar I played, it was a nylon string guitar. And to me, it's the purest form of guitar making, and I just enjoy doing it. — Guy Clark

Lying on her side, the warm fire at her feet, Helen's laughter died away as Lucas suddenly went from tuning to playing.
It was like an orchestra in an instrument.
He played with both hands-not one hand picking and the other holding down strings-but with both hands so that it sounded like more than one guitar was playing. Sometimes he hit the strings to make them hum like a harp, and sometimes he hit the body of the guitar like a drum to add bass and keep time. It was the most fascinating thing Helen had ever watched, like Lucas had a dozen voices in his head, all singing the same song, and he'd figured a way to make them come out of ten fingers.
Helen looked at his face and could tell why he loved it. It was like thinking for him, only this was a puzzle that he could share with her as he solved it.
He'd walked into her head when he'd come to her world. And she'd walked into his when she finally heard him play.
It was heaven. — Josephine Angelini

You have to understand that the bass guitar is the party instrument. It only has four strings. If you see a bass player playing five strings, take your shoe off and throw it at him. — Keith Morris

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 — Eddie Van Halen

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

The only way a djinni can advance in rank and increase in power is to obtain more knowledge. For example, djinn can manipulate the matter in the universe by changing the vibration of strings. This action is much like playing a guitar: the more chords a person knows, the wider the repetoire. Individual string vibrations determine the type of particles and matter formed, and djinn are able to change the "notes" of the strings, thus changing one form of matter into another. — Rosemary Ellen Guiley

We had a music teacher in sixth grade, and I saw her tune her guitar. I said, 'Whoa. There's a certain way to do this.' I bought a packet of strings - some of mine were broken - and had her tune it for me. For a while, I just kept it like that. But I got the Internet finally, when I was 14, and started learning. — Brittany Howard

I remember when I was coming up, the music stores where you could get guitar strings was where I got my records from. Now the place where you get your records from is where you can get your DJ mats and your mixers. — Jam Master Jay

When I got my first guitar my fingers wouldn't go to the sixth string so I took off the big E and played with just five strings. I was only 6 or 7. — Les Paul

I had a guitar sitting around, and it just happened to have four strings on it, and I would sit around watching TV and playing it. I ended up writing bunches of songs around four strings. — Bill Orcutt

My guitar only has five strings 'cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there. — Brian Eno

I tried the guitar, but it had two strings too many. It was just too complicated, man! Plus, I grew up with Steve Cropper. There were so many good guitar players, another one wasn't needed. What was needed was a bass. — Donald Dunn

My only expenses are probably guitar strings and records. — Chris Isaak

I did pick up a guitar once, but the strings hurt my fingers so I put it down again. — Bill Nighy

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

I love you like a guitar loves hands. The strings of my heart will never sing without your touch. — Debasish Mridha

People everywhere, enjoying life, smiling, and just slowing down to let the world take care of itself for a few hours.
The feeling was contagious. Especially when I stepped into McPherson's Pub to grab a bite of the special and listen to some traditional Irish music. The fiddle made me want to dance with myself, and many did. The drum beat like my very own heart. And some little flute that looked no wider than a pencil reminded me of the Aran Islands floating not too far from Abbeyglen.
God was here tonight. In the strings of the guitar and the call of the singer's voice. I realize how often I overlook him back at home.
And I know I don't want to do that anymore.
The LORD will send His faithful love by day; His song will be with me in the night a prayer to the Gid of my life. — Jenny B. Jones

A lean, loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept. His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable. — William Christopher Handy

Let me explain something about guitar playing. Everyone's got their own character, and that's the thing that's amazed me about guitar playing since the day I first picked it up. Everyone's approach to what can come out of six strings is different from another person, but it's all valid. — Jimmy Page

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It's still got the same strings on it. — Brian Eno

If you play "I Don't Want To Know" by Fleetwood Mac loud enough
you can hear Lindsey Buckingham's fingers sliding down the strings of his acoustic guitar ... And we were convinced that this was the definitive illustration of what we both loved about music; we loved hearing the INSIDE of a song. — Chuck Klosterman

Jesus, music has always been my first love. I use music in my work because it's the fastest way to an emotional place. You hear a song, and that memory comes right back
you're there ... Making music is immediate, and it's all about you. If you're playing guitar, the feeling comes through
the way you bend the note, the intensity with which you hit the strings. With making films, although it's real emotion, it's false emotion. You're lying. — Johnny Depp

Never having thought of writing for the guitar, I asked Julian Bream for a chart which would explain what the guitar could do. I managed to write some rather pretty pieces for him, except that the first six notes of the first piece all need to be played on open strings. So when he begins to play the audience will probably think he's tuning the bloody thing up! — William Walton

She rubbed it onto his hands one day in Year Eleven, feeling the texture of his fingertips, callused by the strings of his guitar, and his palms, rough from woodwork. ("Productive, despite your lazy streak," she had said, inspecting them.) — Melina Marchetta

I use heavy strings, tune low, play hard, and floor it. Floor it. That's technical talk. — Stevie Ray Vaughan

The opening notes of a song began, some plucking of guitar strings. I knew the melody. It was Maroon 5's "She Will Be Loved." As pop songs went, it was pretty damn good, a bit of a favorite of mine. — Kylie Scott

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. — Eddie Van Halen

Scott smirked. "You know it's always worse when you're around. And I still think I can keep up with you. Of course, you're going to drive off, go back home, drink a fifth and play guitar all night and not feel a thing. On the other hand, I'll be up thirteen times to take a piss before five AM, have a hella case of acid reflux and sore fingers from shredding guitar strings. — Carrie Clevenger

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. — Mark Ronson