Top 100 Quotes About Chords
#1. 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
#2. You treat the air as a canvas and the paint is the chords that come through your fingers, out of the keyboard.
Pharrell Williams
#3. Notes and chords have become my second language and, more often than not, that vocabulary expresses what I feel when language fails me. The guitar is my conscience, too - whenever I've lost my way, it's brought me back to center; whenever I forget, it reminds me why I'm here.
Slash, Anthony Bozza
#4. Since I was doing all of it myself, I had to decide where I wanted to go with the songs, how to proceed with the chords, if the sound was alright, and all that detail on my own.
Utada Hikaru
#5. There are chords in the human heart- strange, varying strings- which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch.
Charles Dickens
#6. We are the kind of people who obsess over one word ... but we have only one shot to get it right in concert. It was hard the first time I practiced with them. I was so nervous that my vocal chords were paralyzed for about a half-hour.
Amy Tan
#7. Everything in the world's got a voice; most people don't hear hard enough is all. Sunrise sounds like slow chords dripping from my guitar this morning. Sad chords, in B-flat.
Cath Crowley
#8. I formed several possible stories out of her speech, formed them at once, so it was less like I failed to understand than that I understood in chords, understood in a plurality of worlds.
Ben Lerner
#9. I'm no good with chords. I'm horrible with chords.
B.B. King
#10. The strangest part of Indian music is its lack of chords: There's no such thing as major or minor, and it's unusual to hear more than two different pitches at the same time.
Jonny Greenwood
#11. I thrive on change. That's probably why my chord changes are weird, because chords depict emotions. They'll be going along on one key and I'll drop off a cliff, and suddenly they will go into a whole other key signature. That will drive some people crazy, but that's how my life is.
Joni Mitchell
#12. A widow, the mother of a family, and from her heart she produces chords to which my whole being responds.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
#13. I knew a lot of chords, but they weren't the chords that came with the melody that came with the idea I had for the song. Melodies are simple things. If you see a train wreck, there's a melody. If you see a little daisy blowing in the breeze, there's a melody.
Tom T. Hall
#14. Trios aren't really geared for slide unless you're gonna play chords, or play that simple George Thorogood style. It gets pretty thin when you play single note lines.
James Hetfield
#15. I do think that film is closest of all to music. Notes and chords on their own don't mean anything. They only mean something when you juxtapose them with something else
Michael Koresky
#16. So I concentrated on the rhythmic side of things, and therefore left a lot of holes. I didn't want to use big pad chords everywhere. All of the songs are built up of small melodies and counter melodies all played very rhythmically.
Midge Ure
#17. I wanted to get a guitar [when I was 13] so I could play punk songs because kid taught me power chords at summer camp. He was like, "You could play all punk songs if you just learn this chord and just move it around on the guitar".
Ezra Furman
#18. Time plays like an accordion in the way it can stretch out and compress itself in a thousand melodic ways. Months on end may pass blindingly in a quick series of chords, open-shut, together-apart; and then a single melancholy week may seem like a year's pining, one long unfolding note.
Julia Glass
#19. At a certain point, I should start to pay attention and make sure I'm not damaging my vocal chords, because I enjoy using them a lot.
Martina Sorbara
#20. As soon as you impose Western chords on an Indian scale, something great collapses.
Jonny Greenwood
#21. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Abraham Lincoln
#22. Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords - philosophy, art, poetry, love, scandal, and the weather.
Anna Jameson
#23. When I first started, I worked with three chords in every bar, but I found that tied me down - I'm not a chord-change writer, I'm a songwriter.
Neil Diamond
#24. I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords. That was my original mission.
Patti Smith
#25. I do remember actually learning chords to Beatles songs. I thought they were great songwriters.
Mick Taylor
#26. Pictorial art is relating tones to create beauty - like chords of music - not the faithful copying of the model.
Harvey Dunn
#27. Chords reel and the mind reels,
and for all I know
The minds of the Gods reel as well
For if the Gods have minds
They must be attuned to music and to harmony.
Harmony is but the pulse of Chaos
And to such pulsation
Even stones resound.
Tobeimean Peter
#28. I don't know about five guys against the world. It's more like five guys against these three chords, and we're gonna wrestle 'em down no matter what it takes.
Benmont Tench
#29. Music really does just boil down to basically, essentially songwriting chords and melodies.
Flume
#30. Whenever we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony preluding on the chords whose tones we are about to harmonize.
Isaac D'Israeli
#31. I think a solo moves forward the way a song does, because it's reflective of the chords that I'm considering as I'm soloing, and at the same time I'm going as much out on a limb as Frank Zappa used to, in terms of just going crazy on the instrument.
John Frusciante
#32. There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It's always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.
David Bowie
#33. Anyone who used more than three chords is just showing off.
Woody Guthrie
#34. Sometimes it starts with a random lyric idea that sets the tone for the whole song. Chords and sounds build from the lyric and rhythm, kind of. Sometimes it's a track I fall I love with ... but writing my own songs, I rarely write on tracks.
Tove Lo
#35. Aunt Clara doesn't take her eyes off her toast. Her delicate jet earrings tremble as her knife scratches at the toast like a cat's paw, buttering every inch. Strange how even the most mundane habits of dislikable people can strike such harsh chords. I even hate the way Aunt butters.
Adele Griffin
#36. I write the music because I can't really write lyrics. But I can write chords like Robin's never heard of. So I provide the music for them to add the lyrics to.
Maurice Gibb
#37. I'm an intuitive musician. I have no real technical skills. I can only play six chords on the guitar.
Patti Smith
#38. I understand I'm supposed to be feminine and dainty, but I'm not. There are two sides to the coin. People are more impressed with things that I do because they almost treat you as if you're handicapped if you're a woman ... people can be impressed that I can play a few chords on the guitar.
Kesha
#39. I don't want to discredit people's opinions of me, but you talk about the violin or the cello or lead guitar where you have to learn tons of chords, that's much more difficult.
Bonnie Raitt
#40. He was a god of rock. He nearly solved all the world's problems with nothing but power chords and anguished cries into a microphone.
Kevin Hearne
#41. I try to be prepared for the moment, through understanding, and being warmed up, knowing all about chords and scales, so I don't even have to think and I can get right to what it is I want to say.
Pat Metheny
#42. Listen to anything and take it apart again. Spectrum analysis, in my head. I can break down chords, and timbres, and words too into all the basic frequencies and harmonics, with all their different loudnesses, and listen to them, each pure tone, but all at once.
Thomas Pynchon
#43. Over the years, I've had to learn to play. For example, when 'Lennon' was on Broadway, I learned my way around the guitar chords because originally we were all going to play the instruments without a band.
Will Chase
#44. I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out.
Carla Bley
#45. A writer's job is done once the lines touch reader's forbidden chords.
Shreya Gupta
#46. You think it's all written, but it's not. There's always another way to twist those three chords around.
Joe Perry
#47. Because with Charlie, nothing was ever easy. Everything was windswept and octagonal and finger-combed. Everything was difficult and odd, and the theme songs all had minor chords.
A.S. King
#48. You see people you identify with, and you take pieces of people you like and shape who you are. Like, I sound just like my dad. But that's literally my vocal chords. I can't sound like anything else ... I sound like him, but I act like myself.
Damon Wayans Jr.
#49. I bought one of those Learn How to Play Guitar Chords By Yourself and it shows you the diagram where to put your hands and I took that in my room, sat with my singles and learned how to play guitar.
Joan Jett
#50. When I listen to my favorite songwriters, they have such simple melodies and chords. I occasionally manage to stop at the right time, but all too often I keep on going until I have way too many notes and words. But that's just what I do.
Dave Matthews
#51. Wild Horses" started in a B-minor chord, and Stu didn't play minor chords, "fucking Chinese music.
Keith Richards
#52. I'd been thinking I'd have to learn how to play really well, but obviously the message of punk was that you just learn three chords in a week and you're away.
Jarvis Cocker
#53. When God is involved, anything can happen. Be open. Stay that way. God has a beautiful way of bringing good vibrations out of broken chords.
Charles R. Swindoll
#54. I bad a piano long before I bad a guitar, and the practice I got just playing those three chords in a basic 12-bar blues song was very important.
Mark Knopfler
#55. Music is gathering. Taking our scattered thoughts and senses and coalescing us back into our core. Music is powerful. The first few chords can change us where no self-help books can.
Jane Siberry
#56. I liken movies to playing a piano: Sometimes you're playing the chords and different notes with unresolved cadences and playing all major chords that are all over the place, and you're enjoying yourself with a great, simple melody.
Jake Gyllenhaal
#57. The heart is like a musical instrument of many strings, all the chords of which require putting in harmony.
Saadi
#58. I knew there was something special between us, knew it as surely as a lyric that belonged in a song. But as with all good songs, I needed time to figure out the melody and chords.
Cari Quinn
#59. I was beginning to realize that what I wanted was the noise of people living near me, but not near enough to cause any inaudible noises to show up because I knew that those sorts of noises often shift into inaudible minor chords and I am unable to deal with that shift.
Catherine Lacey
#60. Nothing is duller than a progression of common chords. One wants some contrast, which breaks up the clear white light and makes it iridescent.
Denis Diderot
#61. Three chords and the truth - that's what a country song is.
Willie Nelson
#62. After 40 years of not playing, I admit I'm totally in love with my guitar. It's a Froggy Bottom acoustic steel string guitar. All I have to do is hit a couple of clean chords and the endorphins are right there. It's like the top of my head has come off and stardust and magic have fallen in.
April Gornik
#63. I am the consequence of a particular type of demographic movement, one that has always involved paying a high price. But I don't know much about styles or genres. I only know notes and chords.
Concha Buika
#64. Yeah, I can read music and I know the names of chords.
Dave Navarro
#65. The total person sings not just the vocal chords.
E. M. Broner
#66. I don't like no fancy chords. Just the boogie. The drive. The feeling. A lot of people play fancy but they don't have no style. It's a deep feeling-you just can't stop listening to that sad blues sound. My sound.
John Lee Hooker
#67. Bill Gates recently picked up the ukulele. And Warren Buffett is a huge ukulele fan. I even got to strum a few chords with Francis Ford Coppola. It blows my mind that these people, who have everything in the world they could want, have picked up the ukulele and found a little bit of joy.
Jake Shimabukuro
#68. When I was on the air a lot my throat and vocal chords got tired. If you don't vary your tones you can't get pretty tired of your own voice.
Alan Ladd
#69. In life, everybody gets the same three chords. It's what you do with them that matters.
Greg Kihn
#70. 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
#71. I began to learn a lot of chords and rhythms. It was a bit boring at the time but came in very handy later on.
Alvin Lee
#72. I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That's when I was born.
Charlie Parker
#73. I can plunk out enough chords to write a song, but I'm completely afraid to play guitar in front of other people. It's a fear of failure, I guess.
Mandy Moore
#74. My vocal chords fought to contain the memories that leaked out; I felt the weight off it all pressing down on me.
Jake Wood
#75. Alone was the note that Cade knew best. It was the root of all her chords.
Amy Rose Capetta
#76. I'll write and make chords with my voice sometimes if I don't have an instrument even though it takes a million times longer.
Zooey Deschanel
#77. My sister played the piano. She's two years older than me, and I always wanted to play something. So my grandmother got the guitar for me, and showed me a couple of chords to start off. And then I got me a book. Next thing you know, I was playing along with sister.
Willie Nelson
#78. The term "black metal" has become a lot looser, or can include a larger range of sounds and extra-musical aesthetics, not just Satan and power chords.
Colin Marston
#79. I lean forward, pressing my lips to his, and it breaks me open. His hand leaves my face and traces notes up my arms, strikes chords on my throat and up into my hair. His mouth forms lyrics that expose my soul.
The kiss is like a song played only once. And forever.
Katherine Longshore
#80. I used to help Viv with the chords and melodies sometimes.
Neil Innes
#82. The real beauty of it - key to my life was playing key chords on a banjo. For somebody else it may be a golf club that mom and dad put in their hands or a baseball or ballet lessons. Real gift to give to me and put it in writing.
Vince Gill
#83. I got started at a really young age. I was about two years old when I started playing the piano and around seven or eight when I started writing my own chords and putting words together.
Jackson Guthy
#84. When I was about 15, I picked up the guitar and learned how to play by going through Beatles chords books. I got this Christmas gift with the entire Beatles catalog.
M. Ward
#85. I spent many years trying to write a lot like Ben Folds or John Lennon or Rivers Cuomo. I think that's healthy when you're learning to write and seeing how chords fit together and how songs take shape.
Andrew Dost
#86. Before too long I was playing badly out in some bars around Memphis, but as soon as I learned a few chords I started writing my own stuff.
Bryan Hayes
#87. I would get my laugh insured! Because my laugh is very important: it's a million dollar laugh, so if my vocal chords make my laugh any different, then I'm going to have to get insured.
Kendra Wilkinson
#88. I have lived twice as long as I should have," the oldest one said, his voice crackling like an old radio because decades were rubbing up against each other around his vocal chords, "and I've never seen so many people so cheerful in such a bad time. It is the Devil's work.
Salman Rushdie
#89. Any quick analysis of a Beatles tune or a Cole Porter tune will reveal often simple but unexpected chords, chords that chromatically shift between keys, or between major and minor.
Paul Zollo
#90. I play until my fingers are blue and stiff from the cold, and then I keep on playing. Until I'm lost in the music. Until I am the music
notes and chords, the melody and harmony. It hurts, but it's okay because when I'm the music, I'm not me. Not sad. Not afraid. Not desperate. Not guilty.
Jennifer Donnelly
#91. To some degree. I think that I've always been very much of a chordal person. The chords are the foundation of everything. Some of Yes' stuff is very linear, albeit complex, but it's single-line melodic stuff. So I kind of had to wear a different cap working with Yes. It's not so much chord-based.
Geoff Downes
#92. Journalists, especially English journalists, were very cruel to me. They said I only knew three chords when I knew five!
Leonard Cohen
#93. The artist who does not feel completely satisfied by elegant lines, by harmonious colors, and by a beautiful succession of chords does not understand the art of music.
Camille Saint-Saens
#94. There are chords in every human heart. If we only knew how to strike the right chord, we would bring out the music.
Mahatma Gandhi
#95. Through this evening of sentences cut short because their completed meaning was always sorrow, of normal life dissolved to tears, the chords of Beethoven sounded serenely.
Rebecca West
#96. The voluptuous chords of the wedding march done in blasphemous syncopation issued in a delirious blend from the trombones and saxophones--and
F Scott Fitzgerald
#97. I guess the approach to song writing for me so far has been to use more chords and less math.
Mick Barr
#98. Speaking softly and slowly, and breathing through the vocal chords in a low voice, has become the mythical ideal voice for a yoga teacher.
Gudjon Bergmann
#100. I like to start with an idea, but then again, I might be sitting at the keyboard, and just playing a bunch of chords that sound cool together, and something just inspires an idea from that.
Diane Warren
