Quotes About Playing Guitar

#1. 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. - Author: Bill Orcutt

#2. The concept of clearing one's mind before performing a task so that it is consumed by nothing but that task, yet is open at the same time to anything that might happen - that concept can be applied to playing guitar, and it's enormously helpful for improvising. - Author: Kirk Hammett

#3. Guitar playing is both extremely easy for me and extremely difficult for me at the same time. - Author: Kirk Hammett

#4. I started out on guitar when I was nine years old, and I started playing bars and stuff when I was thirteen, and I've been playing ever since. - Author: DJ Ashba

#5. My guitar playing is a synthesis of traditional American acoustic style and Urban Pop and R&B. - Author: John Oates

#6. Playing guitar is like telling the truth. - Author: B.B. King

#7. Well, Steve Vai joined my dad's band right around the time when I actually started playing guitar. So he gave me a couple of lessons on fundamentals, and gave me some scales and practice things to work on. But I pretty much learned everything by ear. - Author: Dweezil Zappa

#8. Guitar playing is just something that came to me and is really second nature now. - Author: Dave Navarro

#9. There was nobody at the time who was playing slide guitar like Johnny, and nobody, or no white guys at least, that was playing country blues like that on the acoustic guitar. And it was at that point that I realized what Johnny had to offer. - Author: Rick Derringer

#10. If you can play guitar and sing, you can probably get a gig down the road playing at a restaurant, but don't throw your life away chasing something that is so elusive it will only lead you to regret and may turn you bitter. - Author: Cliff Richard

#11. I will concentrate on playing guitar, on lyrics and on singing. I am a part of things; I am not the encompassing 'Smog.' - Author: Bill Callahan

#12. I started playing guitar back in '56. I was a teenager, and guitars had just come in, and I had a thing for it and got one. Started learning lead breaks from songs, because that was the easiest thing to do at the time. I had the guitar for two years before I learned any chords. Really. - Author: Roger McGuinn

#13. When my guitar was growling, playing surf beat, you could hear it; you could feel it. - Author: Dick Dale

#14. I'm not that fluid when it comes to scales and modes. I just pick up the guitar and play. It's all about exploration: just tune the guitar any way you want and start playing. - Author: Alex Lifeson

#15. I'm in hotel rooms night after night, playing a lot of the same venues as my dad and carrying the guitar that used to be his. We're the same person. I don't know if he realises how much of a legacy he has left to his children. - Author: Martha Wainwright

#16. Whenever I'm on tour and I'm in my hotel room and I'm writing and playing my guitar, I go in the bathroom and I record whatever I'm writing in there. It's just what I love to do. - Author: Colbie Caillat

#17. Guitar playing isn't really for everybody. - Author: Brad Paisley

#18. I just think that the question of women in rock or women playing guitar, I just think it's such a non-issue, and I think that probably the sooner critics and press outlets can just erase the 'what's it like being a women in rock?' question from their vocabulary, the better off everyone will be. - Author: Annie E. Clark

#19. Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact. - Author: Terry Pratchett

#20. I was really into music. I started playing guitar also when I was nine. I wanted to be in the Beatles, even though John Lennon died the year I got a guitar and the Beatles broke up before I was born. - Author: Tig Notaro

#21. You are working up to Mr. Fantastic Fiction levels of Zombie Expert, which is like playing Guitar Hero on some level that actually melts the guitar controller, burning your fingers with searing hot plastic till you scream in pain. Only with words. And zombies. - Author: Libba Bray

#22. I approach playing acoustic guitar more of as a percussive instrument. It's fragile. I don't have a lot of finesse when it comes to my guitar playing. - Author: Billie Joe Armstrong

#23. I drummed in some rock bands. I asked for a drum kit when I was 15 and my parents were kind enough to buy me one and I just started playing with my buddies who played guitar. - Author: Miles Teller

#24. When The Who first started, we were playing blues, and I dug the blues and I knew what I was supposed to be playing, but I couldn't play it. I couldn't get it out. I knew what I had to play; it was in my head. I could hear the notes in my head, but I couldn't get them out on the guitar. - Author: Pete Townshend

#25. I have been playing a lot of keyboards, especially in the last five or six years. I suppose it gives you more scope than the guitar, although it does tend to make you write a different way. - Author: Mick Ralphs

#26. My father had slowed down playing a little ... I was 'round 10 or 12 years old. Every time he put his guitar down, I pick it up. - Author: David Edwards

#27. Oh, man, I love the Staple Singers. I love Pop Staples' guitar playing, too. He's one of my favorite guitar players. - Author: Brittany Howard

#28. A lot of the songs start with an image. I was sitting there playing the guitar and I pictured this old, dirty green car, with the window rolled down, in the hot, hot, hot Texas heat, and this beautiful woman I knew when I was a kid sitting behind the wheel, looking out at me. - Author: Edie Brickell

#29. I'm singing and dancing and playing guitar. I really enjoy pushing myself into different aspects. I'm not going to do this for the rest of my life, but I want to keep challenging myself. And if I'm fearful of something I definitely want to step into it and see how good or bad I am at it. - Author: Dustin Clare

#30. As I've grown older I've been more influenced by more meandering styles of guitar playing, whether it's Celtic or Ethiopian folk music or some kind of noisier jazz like Sonny Sharrock. In terms of songwriting, I don't know that I could even pin it down. - Author: Ted Leo

#31. I never had a real job either. I sort of fell out of school and ended up playing guitar. - Author: Vivian Campbell

#32. And oh my God, who brought that goddamn guitar? I want to kill them. Do you know how you can tell who the douche bag is at the party? It's the guy who starts playing the acoustic guitar. - Author: Robin Benway

#33. All of a sudden there's a song - there in your hotel room playing your guitar - and you write it, and two or three years later it will come true. It keeps you on your toes. - Author: Townes Van Zandt

#34. The bulk of my set is instrumental and you have to give yourself and the audience some relief because a performance is not about great guitar playing it's really about entertainment. - Author: Leo Kottke

#35. When I was 11 years old, I started playing guitar. - Author: Wyclef Jean

#36. I started playing guitar when I was 6 or 7 years old, and I think that, within a week of getting my first guitar, I started writing music. I just love it. - Author: Robby Benson

#37. I mean, playing music at home and writing and hanging out with my guitar is kind of medicinal for me, but when I bring the songs to people on stage, it's very joyous. - Author: Ani DiFranco

#38. When I was younger, playing piano and guitar were all things that I wanted to do for a short period of time, like any kid. - Author: Katie Cassidy

#39. I'm really looking forward to it, if you can imagine floating weightless, watching the world pour by through the big bay window of the space station playing a guitar; just a tremendous place to think about where we are in history. - Author: Chris Hadfield

#40. I've probably gone a month or two without playing guitar, just because I've gotten so burnt on it touring all year or whatever. - Author: Jonny Lang

#41. I like jazz, but I could never play it. You just sit there with a guitar the size of a Chevy on your chest, wearing a stupid hat, playing the same solo for an hour. - Author: Dave Mustaine

#42. I love playing guitar. It's the only thing I've ever really been great at, - Author: Johnny Winter

#43. I love Aerosmith. I love Guns N' Roses, AC/DC, anything from that era, Led Zeppelin. So my guitar style is very much like Slash or Jimmy Page. I love playing that kind of music. It's where my heart's at. - Author: Billy Unger

#44. My mom really wanted me to be a musician so she gave me a guitar for my fifth birthday, but I didn't start playing till I was seven. - Author: Yngwie Malmsteen

#45. When I picked up the guitar for the first time, it opened up a whole new world for me. I became obsessed with writing and playing. - Author: Drake Bell

#46. Rock guitarists usually do not wish to think trains of thought about anything but their own guitar playing during a long solo, and I could not play this way if I were not able to divide my attention between my ever changing musical environment and my instrument itself. - Author: John Frusciante

#47. I consider myself as a singer first, but something that really helped me come into my own is that there's not a separation between me singing and me playing the guitar. The two fed off the other. - Author: Shawn Colvin

#48. I've actually been playing music ever since I was a young a kid. I got my first guitar when I was about 7 or 8 years old, so I've always been doing music. - Author: Shane Harper

#49. In certain ways I still feel like I'm finding my way. I feel pretty comfortable playing acoustic guitar and singing, but then I feel pretty good sitting on a reggae groove as well. - Author: Colin Hay

#50. Basically, I'm just a guitar player that figured out I wasn't ever gonna be able to buy dinner with my guitar playing so I got into songwriting, which is a little more profitable business. - Author: J.J. Cale

#51. 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. - Author: Jimmy Page

#52. Acting, I love it and I feel that I'm good at it, but the thing that makes me feel most alive is when I'm playing guitar and singing. - Author: Taryn Manning

#53. When I'm not writing music, I'm playing guitar, or reading philosophy. So all I have left is just an hour or two for Claudia Schiffer. - Author: Richard Pinhas

#54. My father was a guitar player, and I was raised with a super high standard of what good guitar playing was. - Author: Billy Corgan

#55. How many people have stopped playing guitar, writing poetry, or painting watercolors - activities packed with flow triggers - because these are also activities that do not squarely fit into culturally acceptable responsibility categories like "career" or "children"? - Author: Steven Kotler

#56. People don't understand what music really is. I've been a musician since I was 6 years old. I got my first piano, was playing recitals at 8, 10 I picked up a guitar, 12 I picked up my first Pearl Master drum set. I was an artist before I was an 'artist.' - Author: Mitchel Musso

#57. Around middle school I studied jazz guitar and ended up playing in a jazz band for a bit. But, after high school, I haven't even touched a guitar. - Author: Mike Tucker

#58. I'm glad I get singled out for my slide guitar-playing, which isn't that difficult to do. I didn't take guitar lessons, but I just love the way it sounds, almost like the human voice. - Author: Bonnie Raitt

#59. Keith Richards ... was once asked how he came up with all those amazing guitar riffs. His answer? He just starts playing until he makes the right mistake. In other words he's optimistic he will create something good by virtue of getting something "wrong." - Author: Mark Stevenson

#60. Anyone who can do the splits and come back up on the backbeat, as James Brown and Prince can, has my eternal respect. Prince, who is a genius of the highest order, can come back up while singing and playing the guitar. - Author: Bill Nighy

#61. Do you have a feel for the guitar? Do you have any idea what this little baby is capable of?" Without waiting for an answer, he climbed up into his chair and began playing "Light My Fire," adding, "This one is for Joan. - Author: David Sedaris

#62. It was great to do August Rush and have all the challenges of playing that character, especially the American accent for the first time and also playing the guitar and the conducting I had to do. - Author: Freddie Highmore

#63. Catfish is not playing guitar no more, he's doing like a home-front thing. He had been in the business around ten years before I got in it, so I guess he's had enough of it. - Author: Bootsy Collins

#64. I learned how to play guitar by playing along to Jane's Addiction records and Smashing Pumpkins records, things you can totally hear if you listen to my guitar. - Author: Chino Moreno

#65. A guitar is a very personal extension of the person playing it. You have to be emotionally and spiritually connected to your instrument. I'm very brutal on my instruments, but not all the time. - Author: Eddie Van Halen

#66. Death is never more than a breath away from the act of playing music. Each note on a guitar represents a small curve: birth, life, and death-and then you start over. - Author: Andy Summers

#67. I'm just very sort of compulsive and lack the ability to keep things in perspective. If I'm not writing or playing guitar or on the microphone or out on the road, I'm cleaning pots and pans or freaking out about some plumbing issue or tweeting. - Author: Marc Maron

#68. If you told me I was going to live to 240, I would take 10 years off and try and act. I don't have that kind of time, so I'd much rather stick to playing guitar. - Author: John Mayer

#69. I just started playing guitar and started singing and started working on this act that I would call 'Don McLean' when I was probably in high school. - Author: Don McLean

#70. My first instrument was actually the trombone, but that didn't last long. Soon I was playing guitar in bands from the time I was 11 or 12. - Author: Dave Grohl

#71. I'm really very embarrassed about my guitar playing, in one way, because it's very poor. I can never move but I can make a guitar speak. - Author: John Lennon

#72. The very first concert I ever went to on my own was actually Rory Gallagher. In a one-month period in 1973 or '74, I saw him, Thin Lizzy and the Rolling Stones. I wasn't really a big Rory Gallagher fan, but I thought his guitar playing was fabulous. But Thin Lizzy, they were fabulous. - Author: Robert Smith

#73. The Tinted Windows shows were very fun but it's very different for me as a performer. I'm not playing music - I'm just singing and I missed that. I miss rocking out on keys, drums, guitar ... whatever it is. - Author: Taylor Hanson

#74. I worked hard at that through most of the '80s, and in 1990 my house burned in New Hampshire, and my studios and my offices. I had to decide at what level to rebuild, and I decided that I was going to stop trying to be all things to all people, and just go back to playing the guitar. - Author: Tom Rush

#75. Age isn't a barrier to playing the bass, and I've definitely improved over the years, although maybe I'm not as flash as I once was. But looking back, I can't imagine a life without a guitar. - Author: Suzi Quatro

#76. 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 ... - Author: Ryan Adams

#77. I'm a huge fan of Joe Walsh and a big James Gang fan. A lot of what I know about playing the guitar I learned from listening to him. - Author: Tom Scholz

#78. A horn has that voice quality, and an electric guitar can emulate that. But playing an acoustic, the notes don't sustain like that. - Author: Bill Orcutt

#79. I was basically a dork that hit the books and liked to build things and did all of the things that you weren't supposed to do to be popular. But somehow I ended up onstage, playing guitar in front of everybody else. - Author: Tom Scholz

#80. I do some solo, acoustic stuff, but I also like plugging in my electric guitar and playing loud with a band. - Author: James Bay

#81. Guitar playing is very important to me. It's like golf to some other people; it's important to me that I play good. - Author: Merle Haggard

#82. God is playing my guitar, I am with God when I play. - Author: Link Wray

#83. I feel like something I've wanted to do for a really long time, in a feature film or anything, is playing a rocker. Somewhere where I can be on a stage and have a guitar or a microphone and just kind of jam out. - Author: Olivia Holt

#84. I think a guitar solo is how my emotion is most freely released, because verbal articulation isn't my strongest communication strength. My wife thinks that I should do interviews by listening to the questions and playing the answer on guitar. - Author: David Gilmour

#85. 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. - Author: Jason Reeves

#86. Texas people are really strong in their roots. I started writing and playing guitar at 17. I've always loved music, and my dad is a singer-songwriter. - Author: Miranda Lambert

#87. 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. - Author: Willie Nelson

#88. When the intellectual part of guitar playing overrides the spiritual, you don't get to extreme heights. - Author: John Frusciante

#89. As soon as I had a guitar I loved it, and I started playing in every spare moment. - Author: David Rawlings

#90. I have come to the conclusion - and I don't know why it took me so long, but nevertheless, I'm here now - that a lot of people tell me they don't get enough guitar on my albums. So I decided to do an album where the guitar would be the singer, playing the melody. - Author: Carlos Santana

#91. Playing the guitar is like telling the truth - you never have to worry about repeating the same [lie] if you told the truth. You don't have to pretend, or cover up. If someone asks you again, you don't have to think about it or worry about it because there it is. It's you. - Author: B.B. King

#92. I'm still like an excited kid playing guitar in front of the bedroom mirror. - Author: James Bay

#93. I've always enjoyed singing and can't recall a time in my life where I wasn't singing. I'm most grateful for the strength I have in that department. I have a lot of bad habits on the guitar which limits my playing ability. But I get a little better each year. - Author: Jason Mraz

#94. If I'm playing with Ozzy it's just a guitar thing. But with the vocals I feel like I'm studying for the SATs. - Author: Zakk Wylde

#95. I've learned not to let it be the end of the world if a boy doesn't like you. I used to put so much effort into boys. I started playing guitar because I wanted to impress this boy. Then, I ended up in love with guitar and I didn't care about the boy anymore. - Author: Ellie Goulding

#96. I started playing the guitar and singing at about 11 or 12. - Author: Drake Bell

#97. Usually, I'll just sit down at a piano or with a guitar, and I'll just be relaxed and playing music. Because that's what relaxes your subconscious. That's why everyone from animals to humans love music. - Author: Cat Power

#98. It was cool at the rock camp - girls could just be themselves and they could be silly, they could roll around on the floor playing guitar. - Author: Courtney Barnett

#99. My dad, who plays guitar and piano and was in cover bands, along with my older brother, Matt, taught me guitar and stuff. I started writing acoustic songs and playing by myself in 7th grade. - Author: Conor Oberst

#100. I designed a guitar for Ibanez and then they started manufacturing it - it's called the Jem - it's 26 years old and I still play it. As a kid I liked Les Pauls and Strats, but they had limitations for the kind of playing I wanted to do. - Author: Steve Vai