Quotes About Playing An Instrument

#1. When I was 17 I got a guitar for my birthday and started discovering Bob Dylan and James Taylor and the whole '60s thing, and that made me want to make songs, to go beyond just playing an instrument. I needed to write I guess.

Jason Reeves

#2. Once I got a guitar that was relatively user-friendly, but not super-duper easy, I really came on as a guitarist, at that point. It helped. It was a super-expensive guitar either, but something needs to steer you a bit, if you're playing an instrument that is really hard.

Jimmy Page

#3. Jamie Foxx does a good rendition of me. It's a real gift, mimicry of that kind, the tonal thing. It's sort of like having a talent for playing an instrument.

Al Pacino

#4. The fact of playing an instrument and singing ... that I can try to make my dream of singing and becoming a professional musician come true is linked probably to the fact that I traveled a lot, which gave me an open mind and an ability to push my limits.

Rokia Traore

#5. The French idea of playing an instrument well is to be able to SING well upon it.

Richard Wagner

#6. What makes for freedom and fluency in the practice of writing? Knowledge of how to write. The same goes for the practice of playing an instrument. It follows that, in the conduct of life, there must be a science to living well.

Epictetus

#7. Playing an instrument is its own reward.
Cleaning out a spit valve is its own punishment.

Peter James West

#8. While some people are good at painting, playing an instrument or singing, I have been told more than once I am good at storytelling. I hope that you enjoy my stories as I recall them.

Eric Arrouze

#9. Often, one compensates by playing an instrument, or going hiking, or joining some club. In other words, one creates a new type of society, when not working, in which one can feel more at home.

Isaac Asimov

#10. To me, playing an instrument and singing, all of these different things are just as natural to me as rhyming.

Mos Def

#11. Why would you want to stand there waving a stick when you could be playing an instrument?

Nigel Kennedy

#12. Good taste - that's all you really need when you're playing an instrument.

Kristin Hersh

#13. I'd actually say that every musician is a human being, and that not everybody likes being social. But with music, there are all these ingredients to the business that have nothing to do with writing songs or playing an instrument.

Amanda Palmer

#14. Being in a band is far more than playing an instrument. It's surviving. It's getting an album together.

Josh Silver

#15. It's hard to sing really well when you're playing an instrument, but it'd be great to try and sing really well and have vocal effects and one drummer on a real drum-kit, and one on an electronic kit.

Jay Watson

#16. Talent is required, but much of writing is a matter of craft, which develops with time, attention, patience and practice, like playing an instrument or learning to dance.

Susan Wiggs

#17. Music itself is a great source of relaxation. Parts of it anyway. Working in the studio, that's not relaxing, but playing an instrument that I don't know how to play is unbelievably relaxing, because I don't have any pressure on me.

Jackson Browne

#18. It is not a dreamlike state, but the somehow insulated state, that a great musician achieves in a great performance. He's aware of where he is and what he's doing, but his mind is on the playing of the instrument with an internal sense of rightness.

Arnold Palmer

#19. I've always loved the guitar. You see Jimi Hendrix playing the guitar with his teeth, and OK, you know you're never going to be able to do that, but I always wanted to play an instrument of some sort.

Michelle Ryan

#20. I think that maybe I do want to learn to play"
... "Oh, I think you're quite adept at playing already, Tesoro."
"No." She giggled. "An instrument."
"I'm allowing that joke to pass. Too obvious.

Elizabeth Hunter

#21. Even as a child Gates had an obsessive personality and a compulsive need to be the best. "Any school assignment, be it playing a musical instrument or writing papers, whatever, he would do at any or all hours of the day".

James Wallace

#22. When I was four, we had to choose a musical instrument to play at school, and I chose the cello. I played until I was 18, and although I found it nerve-racking to play solo, I loved playing in an orchestra. When I left school I didn't carry on with it, which I regret.

Emilia Fox

#23. A band asked me to go on tour when I was 22 and asked me to play drums, and I taught myself so I could go on this trip with these people. The drums found me; I didn't find them. When I started playing, I realized how appropriate an instrument it was for me.

Janet Weiss

#24. Like many musicians, I can hear the weight in the sound. Sound is matter. We speak of the colour of an instrument, of transparency ... We can demand more sombre or lighter colours, deeper playing and singing, heavier or lighter sound. And manipulating those means is like creating a painting.

Laurence Equilbey

#25. To teach a child an instrument without first giving him preparatory training and without developing singing, reading and dictating to the highest level along with the playing is to build upon sand.

Zoltan Kodaly

#26. In fact, the element of play has an important role in my life, and I think that should be the case in the life of every artist. Our life is occupied with playing, whether we play an instrument or a role.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

#27. I grew up with rock and pop music from the 70s and 80s. I had to play guitar in school - it was a music college and we had to take instrument classes there - so I think guitar playing and guitar sounds have always been an influence.

Christian Fennesz

#28. the way he could walk straight into a party full of people they didn't know and stick his hand out to a stranger and say, "I'm Nick. This is my wife, Alice." It was as though he had an amazing skill, like playing a complicated musical instrument, that Alice could never hope to master.

Liane Moriarty

#29. In the phusical sense, 'playing a fret less instrument in tune' is an impossibility. Hence what we call 'playing in tune' is no more than an extremely rapid skilfully carried out improvement of the originally inexactly located pitch.

Carl Flesch

#30. I wish I played an instrument, but I could never decide which one, and I ended up playing nothing.

Nastassja Kinski

#31. If a poem is written well, it was written with the poet's voice and for a voice. Reading a poem silently instead of saying a poem is like the difference between staring at sheet music and actually humming or playing the music on an instrument.

Robert Pinsky

#32. You would never do stand-up without an audience. I mean, no one would even consider it. It's like they're the instrument you're playing.

Louis C.K.

#33. Piano playing is a dying art. I love the fact that I can be one guy with one instrument evoking an emotional and musical experience.

Jon Bon Jovi

#34. In a way, making Martin Ellingham the way he is was a corrective exercise for my acting - to keep a bit still and show a little control. I do like it - it's like having an instrument that you can play and that you can pick up and enjoy playing.

Martin Clunes

#35. I'm a slow learner. When people are so talented or facile at picking up an instrument and playing covers, like Yo La Tengo, I admire that. But I could never do that.

Kim Gordon

#36. I think when I was pretty young I got really into the tone of my instrument and I remember just playing one note for an hour to just kind of feel the resonance of the violin.

Andrew Bird

#37. I play an instrument that has four strings, and I'm still trying to get it right. What I've tried to do in the process of playing these four strings is to try and understand the people I meet, the stories they have to tell. And then become an advocate for them and their stories through music.

Yo-Yo Ma

#38. The quality of instruction is very high at the Silverlake Conservatory of Music. It's not about being a rock star. It's about the fundamentals of music, theory and technique on a particular instrument, and playing in an ensemble or private setting.

Flea