Rhythm Guitar Quotes & Sayings

I've got my own style on the guitar, sure, and I play rhythm in a certain way, and I use certain inflections. People have said that to me, and I understand it. — Noel Gallagher

I've been used for writing rhythm guitar chords for a long time because it's so easy to play and chords just sound good on it. — Bradford Cox

I know melody. I know rhythm; I know bass guitar; I know the piano. I know everything about music that helps build the music that go along with creating the whole art form, you know what I'm saying? — Nayvadius Cash

I can play rhythm guitar. I know how to hold a guitar and strum it. — Jamie Lee Curtis

The guitar is such an incredible instrument; it plays classical, flamenco, jazz, country, bluegrass, rock, acid, blues. You'll never see a clarinet playing Black Sabbath. But you will see a guitar in a clarinet band playing rhythm. It is the most popular instrument in the world; it is the one everybody loves. — Randy Bachman

We have to focus on his early work, and just one or two of his movies, and elements of his TV shows, to keep his memory pure. People now know that Elvis could play a mean rhythm guitar himself, and needed no other musicians to perform a great song. But Elvis was not just a rock star, he was an all-round entertainer. — Pete Townshend

What interested me about Chuck Berry was the way he could step out of the rhythm part with such ease, throwing in a nice, simple riff, and then drop straight into the feel of it again. We used to play a lot more rhythm stuff. We'd do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. You can't go into a shop and ask for a "lead guitar". You're a guitar player, and you play a guitar. — Keith Richards

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

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

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

What I used to play was rhythm guitar before I saw Jack Bruce. I said, That's what I want to do in life. He was definitely the main influence. — Geezer Butler

I used a baritone guitar with a very unusual tuning that became the body of the composition, while the classical guitar is on top of it with the main rhythm part. — Lee Ritenour

I play the harmonium. I had learned to use the guitar for a bit before becoming a part of the music industry, but unfortunately didn't pursue it fully. I would love to learn to play the piano because it holds a unique connect for me in terms of rhythm. — Kailash Kher

I guess, and it may be a flaw, that I think about rhythm more [than anything else]. I'm always wanting to find something unusual. I've started to try and write more traditionally, but for whatever reason, I tend toward trying to find something that sounds more like a pattern to me. — Dave Matthews

Boast of Quietness
Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than meteors.
The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.
Sure of my life and death, I observe the ambitious
and would like to understand them.
Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.
Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.
They speak of humanity.
My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty.
They speak of homeland.
My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword,
the willow grove's visible prayer as evening falls.
Time is living me.
More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.
They are indispensable, singular, worthy of tomorrow.
My name is someone and anyone.
I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away
he doesn't expect to arrive. — Jorge Luis Borges

To get my sound in the studio, I double guitar tracks, and when it gets to the lead parts, the rhythm drops out, just like it's live. I'm very conscious of that. — Dimebag Darrell

But my role is to just apply the skills I've learned over the years: you listen to the guitar, you listen to the vocal melodies, you listen to the rhythm, and you come up with something that helps you take the song somewhere. — Krist Novoselic

I noticed a lot of guitar players neglected the rhythm part of rhythm guitar and decided I would try to focus in that. — Hal Sparks

Television was the only band of its ilk that treated the guitar with delicacy, not as simple rhythm support for teenage aggression. — Richard Lloyd

I usually start with a guitar riff or some little pattern of chords, and then I kind of go from there. Usually my lyrics are the last thing to go onto a song. For years and years I only ever did instrumental, so I'm still trying to get confidant with my lyrics and find the right balance. I'll generally get inspired from the music. I'll have a guitar line, and then I'll have a melody line, and I hook the lyrics up to fit that rhythm. So, my lyrics to tend be very rhythmic as well. They work with the music rather than the music works around them. — Butterfly Boucher

In Detroit, it was an average night to go and hear the Stooges, Parliament-Funkadelic and the MC5 on the same show. We were all into the 'Free Jazz' movement, the musics of Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra; and experimenting with guitar sounds, and trying different beats, and pushing the rhythm farther... — Wayne Kramer

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

My first love in music was jazz, but I like it all," "I reacted emotionally to Art Blakey and, of course, to Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery. I was all of 16 when I had my first guitar lesson with Joe. But I never focused on being a bebop player. I loved the harmony, rhythm and phrasing, but I wanted to apply them to my own concept and sound. — Larry Carlton

I took the rhythm place, which a lot of people didn't know how to do the way I could, and this was really the first time that Johnny had a rhythm guitar player. — Rick Derringer

As a musician, I don't think I'm the greatest guitar player. I'm a bigger fan of the drums than I am the guitar; I just happen to play guitar. I play drums almost every day at my house. I wrote a lot of songs behind the drum kit, just having the music and vocals in my head and playing the rhythm. — Daron Malakian

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 story here.
A catastrophic silence where our thoughts and feelings collide ...
Where your sweetness overrides my senses and our bodies move to the same tune.
The same song.
The same melody.
The same stroke.
The same rhythm.
It's our story, Trinity, and it's just begging to be told. — Nadege Richards

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

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

Pete Townshend is one of my greatest influences. More than any other guitarist, he taught me how to play rhythm guitar and demonstrated its importance, particularly in a three-piece band. — Alex Lifeson

It's a magical thing, the guitar. It allows you to be the whole band in one, to play rhythm and melody, sing over the top. And as an instrument for solos, you can bend notes, draw emotional content out of tiny movements, vibratos and tonal things which even a piano can't do. — David Gilmour

Guitarists should be able to pick up the guitar and play music on it for an hour, without a rhythm section or anything. — Joe Pass

Even before I wrote any songs, I had this idea of a triangle where the voice was at the top, some sort of guitar element on one side, and then some sort of really basic rhythm on the other side. That's where I started from in the recording process. — Panda Bear

Playing the guitar, you kind of lock into a rhythm and a groove, and then it relaxes me to make up lyrics and sing. — Cat Power

Rock & Roll is feeling, and after you know most of the basics ... chords, rhythm, scales and bends ... getting that feeling is just about the most important aspect of playing guitar — Eddie Van Halen

I feel my spot is somewhere between a bass player and a rhythm guitar player. I play with a pick. I play very aggressively. I always have a distortion pedal in line, and I play less melodies and do more stuff against the guitars that create melodies. — Nikki Sixx

I think the way I play the guitar is very percussive. I play a lot of rhythm chops as though I were playing congas or something. — Tommy Bolin

Without the Fender bass, there'd be no rock n' roll or no Motown. The electric guitar had been waiting 'round since 1939 for a nice partner to come along. It became an electric rhythm section, and that changed everything. — Quincy Jones

I love Jimi Hendrix obviously, and Jimmy Page and Prince. And also Elvis Presley is a really great guitar player. I don't think he ever took lessons; he was piecing it together himself. But he has great rhythm. And rhythm, to me, you can use it to your advantage if you're not all over the fretboard. — Brittany Howard

If you listen to my tapes, you'd hear 14 different ways to arrange the rhythm guitar behind the harmony vocal, and then 14 different ways with a different vocal. You'd have to really be a music lover to sit through that and find it entertaining. I enjoy it, but I'm easy to please. — Tom Scholz

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

I never wanted to sing. I just wanted to play rhythm guitar - hide in the back and just play. — Kurt Cobain

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

It's the hillbilly rock, beat it with a drum. Playin' them guitars like shootin from a gun. Keepin' up the rhythm, steady as a clock. Doin' a little thing called the hillbilly rock. — Marty Stuart

I'm singing the way that I love to sing, which is like old soul, like old Al Green. I grew up about an hour from Memphis. So all that music that I grew up with - the Stax music and early rhythm 'n' blues - I'm doing that. I'm actually getting out from behind my guitar and I'm singing. — Sheryl Crow

I have actual dreams of Bruce Springsteen calling me up on stage to wear a bandanna and play rhythm guitar next to Little Steven. — Tom Perrotta