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I have no guitar technique.
Author:
Warren Zevon
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I had a good guitar, and I was a young, young kid.
Author:
Warren Zevon
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For me, the most difficult thing is that I am learning melodies on guitar from some songs whose melodies were not meant to be played on guitar. Ever. They were intended mostly for keyboards or melodic percussion.
Author:
Dweezil Zappa
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But the reality is when you write a song, you should be able to strip away all the instruments and just have a song right there with an acoustic guitar and a voice, and the song should be good.
Author:
Dweezil Zappa
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I mean, no offense, but I don't really see why, like guitar players from Creed, or something like that, are on the cover of guitar magazines. Almost anybody can sit down and learn to play those songs.
Author:
Dweezil Zappa
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I just go where the guitar takes me.
Author:
Angus Young
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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
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Unfortunately, most of the songs that I write I don't write them with guitar in mind. I just write it as a song and that was probably one of the ones that left an opening for it. The song's all right, I wouldn't choose to sing it now.
Author:
Roy Wood
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So it's more the musician in me that makes me stretch out and try different things more than anything. But, like a lot of guitar players, I have one certain niche that's my thing that I'm better at than the others.
Author:
Lee Womack
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T-Bone Walker was a big influence on just about every guitar player around.
Author:
Johnny Winter
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I'm not good enough to be playin' much acoustic guitar onstage. Man, you gotta get so right; I mean, the tones, the feel, the sound. Plus, acoustic blues guitar is just that much harder on the fingers.
Author:
Johnny Winter
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I've played piano and guitar when I was younger.
Author:
Debra Wilson
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I think when I began, I played distortion more than the guitar. The results of my strumming. Now I play the twang of the string, which is a lot closer to the source of the sound making.
Author:
Ian Williams
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Still others want a traditional guitar sound if they call you for guitar.
Author:
Mark White
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I wasn't originally a bass player. I just found out I was needed, because everyone wants to play guitar.
Author:
Tina Weymouth
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I never liked mellow sounding guitar.
Author:
Tom Verlaine
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It all comes down to the density of the wood. Every guitar's different.
Author:
Robin Trower
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I didn't want to get attached to one guitar; I didn't want to have an instrument that was irreplaceable.
Author:
Robin Trower
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I can't say I feel influenced by today's guitar players.
Author:
Robin Trower
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He is the king. If it hadn't been for Link Wray and 'Rumble,' I would have never picked up a guitar.
Author:
Pete Townshend
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It is the most delightful thing that ever happens to me, when I hear something coming out of my guitar and out of my mouth that wasn't there before.
Author:
James Taylor
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What I wanted to do was play the guitar but I don't like instrumental rock. I think it is tripe.
Author:
Andy Summers
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The most obvious thing you can't do with a guitar synthesizer is to really sound like a guitar.
Author:
Andy Summers
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It's been very hard for the guitar as a serious synthesizer to compete with keyboards.
Author:
Andy Summers
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More recently, I used guitar synthesizer extensively on the two albums I did with Robert Fripp.
Author:
Andy Summers
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For me, the guitar synthesizer is a great writing instrument.
Author:
Andy Summers
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If the guitar synthesizer is really going to stand as a synthesizer on its own, it needs to develop a more characteristic sound; I don' think it's gotten there yet.
Author:
Andy Summers
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I still play the guitar and piano, but hardly ever in public.
Author:
Michael Storm
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I feel like I'm just learning how to play the guitar. I mean, really learning to play the guitar.
Author:
Stephen Stills
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Puberty hit me very hard, and I basically had no use for school once I discovered the guitar.
Author:
Rick Springfield
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I just like simplicity. I like simple songs, I like simple chords, simple vocals, simple lead guitar. I just like simplicity. That's just the way I like it.
Author:
Jeremy Spencer
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My sunglasses are like my guitar.
Author:
Patti Smith
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If you play acoustic guitar you're the depressed, sensitive guy.
Author:
Elliott Smith
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My voice is my improvisational instrument, the melody instrument. The guitar is harmonic structure. I'm not a good enough guitarist to improvise on it.
Author:
Paul Simon
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I'm not the kind of guy who deserves to play a vintage guitar because I'm too rough on instruments.
Author:
Tommy Shaw
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On acoustic guitar I tend to stay in the key of D for some reason. On electric guitar I keep basic: C, G, D, and A. The key of D minor is also real good for me.
Author:
Tommy Shaw
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I didn't want to take the guitar solos down note-for-note, but more or less use them as a map, and keep all the hooks from the guitar playing, and let myself come through.
Author:
Brian Setzer
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The guitar is a small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different color, a different voice.
Author:
Andres Segovia
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I listened to classical guitar and Spanish guitar, as well as jazz guitar players, rock and roll and blues. All of it. I did the same thing with my voice.
Author:
Boz Scaggs
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As a guitar player, you can gravitate to the blues because you can play it easily. It's not a style that's difficult to pick up. It's purely emotive and dead easy to get a start with.
Author:
Boz Scaggs
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As a teenager I started painting and playing guitar.
Author:
Buffy Sainte-Marie
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I'll sit around and play my guitar; that's how I write tunes.
Author:
Otis Rush
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Well, you know it was so different from when you rehearsed. You're out there with your guitar and trying to get a sound, but it doesn't sound anything like what you expect!
Author:
Jonathan Richman
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Now they have banging guitar and no bass and call it rock, but that's not what I call rock.
Author:
Little Richard
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I'm not a really good classical guitarist by any means, but what I learned from this is a way of working very slowly on solo pieces and I enjoyed working on these pieces of John's. They were not written for solo guitar but a lot of them were easy to adapt.
Author:
Marc Ribot
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I have spent over 60 years bent over a guitar and to know that I wrote 70 compositions that masters have recorded, that makes me feel so good and full, and proud and thankful to the good Lord.
Author:
Jerry Reed
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Guitar is great for a certain thing, but a piano is so much more expansive.
Author:
Mick Ralphs
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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
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I'll always do the guitar parts since it's my main instrument.
Author:
Trevor Rabin
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Unless the guitar works as a color, then I don't use it, so I haven't been playing guitar too much lately.
Author:
Trevor Rabin
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I read and write classical piano and percussion, also guitar.
Author:
Suzi Quatro
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I learned to tune a guitar by ear. That method has served me pretty well.
Author:
Charley Pride
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Chet Atkins... is probably the best guitar player who ever lived.
Author:
Charley Pride
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I use a lot more chords than most organists and I'm careful to phrase them with the guitar.
Author:
Alan Price
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So I started to learn guitar right away.
Author:
Piper Perabo
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As a guitar player, it's harder for me to impress somebody than it is to write a song that they like.
Author:
Brad Paisley
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Guitar playing isn't really for everybody.
Author:
Brad Paisley
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I started playing guitar when I was in my late teens, and within two years I was starting to play shows.
Author:
Buzz Osborne
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But remember, guitar players are a dime a dozen.
Author:
Krist Novoselic
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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.
Author:
Krist Novoselic
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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
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I wanted to hear the songs in the way that I had written them, which was very basic. All I wanted was drums and another guitar, and I was just going to sing.
Author:
Thurston Moore
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A lot of places we go, when they see the organ coming in, they're expecting rock and roll, but after they hear us play they like it. To me, guitar cuts through-it carries more than organ. But organ has got more guts.
Author:
Wes Montgomery
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I've got 50 different tunings in the guitar.
Author:
Joni Mitchell
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I was playing with steel picks on a steel guitar, and there was no amplification needed.
Author:
Brownie McGhee
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The guitar was my weapon, my shield to hide behind.
Author:
Brian May
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I'm pretty basic as far as technique is concerned. I don't use many gadgets, and I like the sound my guitar makes, anyway.
Author:
Brian May
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I'm thinking about learning a few new things - like taking classical guitar lessons - and I'd like to bring what I learn into hard rock.
Author:
Mick Mars
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I would walk down the hall with my guitar and play for anyone that would listen. As a young kid I was really driven and I was going to make it happen no matter what.
Author:
Teena Marie
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I play guitar, piano, bass and percussion.
Author:
Teena Marie
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I played guitar when I was young and never really considered it as a way to make a living.
Author:
Lyle Lovett
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I want every girl in the world to pick up a guitar and start screaming.
Author:
Courtney Love
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Bruce's band is so different from the Grateful Dead; there's no lead guitar player, for one thing.
Author:
Phil Lesh
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I have a piano and a guitar, and I tend to switch back and forth between those two instruments to help me get inspired.
Author:
Sean Lennon
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I went to see John Mayall at the Marquee, with Peter Green on guitar, and that was a particularly good gig.
Author:
Alvin Lee
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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.
Author:
Alvin Lee
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I had been playing single note instruments and I wanted to hear a guitar played as a piano.
Author:
Leo Kottke
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Yeah. I'm amateurish. I can play enough to write a song, or strum on a little guitar to write out a song. But, I don't play well at all. I wouldn't even attempt for a second to play in public.
Author:
Ben King
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I'm a bass player from way back and Paul is a guitar player and we've been in many bands.
Author:
Adam Jones
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I've always dabbled on guitar, but never took lessons.
Author:
Adam Jones
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I'm not a good guitar player.
Author:
Adam Jones
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I pestered the hell out of everybody I ran into until I could play the guitar well enough to write and sing with it.
Author:
Don Johnson
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My guitar is not a thing. It is an extension of myself. It is who I am.
Author:
Joan Jett
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I'm starting to play all the melodies with kind of keyboard sound but playing it from the bass guitar.
Author:
Tom Jenkinson
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I was a drummer and I played the guitar.
Author:
Jam Jay
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I had done a fair bit of traveling during the holidays in my school days with my guitar and discovered that I could live on it. Admittedly, I traveled with a sleeping bag but I could always find somewhere to lay my head.
Author:
Jeremy Irons
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I had different bands. I played with the Acoustic Warriors for the most part, without girl singers. It was the same kind of sound, acoustic guitar, bass, with violin and sometimes accordion, and the guys would sing, that kind of thing.
Author:
Dan Hicks
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I didn't know that you were supposed to tune the guitar to an open chord, and I learned to play slide with a normal tuning. I think it's a little more melodic that way and doesn't sound so bluesy. Of course, if I could play like David Lindley or Ry Cooder, I'd be a happy man!
Author:
Ken Hensley
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Once I picked up an electric guitar, I lost interest in piano, and I just wanted to rock. I studied piano for so long, I got burned out on it.
Author:
Juliana Hatfield
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With a guitar I would be able to express the things I felt in sounds.
Author:
William Handy
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Guitar players in the nineties seem to be reacting against the technique oriented eighties.
Author:
Kirk Hammett
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I didn't want to fall into the trap of competing with all these other great guitar players. I just want to sidestep the whole thing and get out of the race.
Author:
Kirk Hammett
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To stay a great singer or guitar player, you've got to do it 24/7. That's what I do.
Author:
Sammy Hagar
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It's hard to say this about a guy like Eddie Van Halen, one of the greatest guitar players who ever lived, but he's really limited to a style and they're locked into it.
Author:
Sammy Hagar
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Dorsey played the upright bass and steel guitar, as well as acoustic guitar. Johnny played acoustic guitar and together they were fabulous songwriters and singers.
Author:
Jimmy Griffin
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In Kid A and Amnesiac, the guitar becomes one more texture, difficult to separate from other textures.
Author:
Colin Greenwood
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You should approach a sequencer like you would a Dobro guitar.
Author:
Colin Greenwood
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Before, I was terrified on stage. I only play guitar during the acoustic songs. After a while, you can elicit certain responses from the crowd, like Elvis.
Author:
Andy Gibb
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I can't even read notes. But I can teach someone how to make a guitar smoke.
Author:
Ace Frehley
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I'll get up there and I'll do my guitar solos in one of those space outfits.
Author:
Ace Frehley
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A lot of times, I played bass on songs. Gene plays guitar on some songs.
Author:
Ace Frehley
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I like the bad-boy types. Generally the guy I'm attracted to is the guy in the club with all the tattoos and nail polish. He's usually the lead singer in a punk band and plays guitar. But my serious boyfriends are relatively clean-cut, nice guys. So it's strange.
Author:
Megan Fox
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We decided to do some of Merle's things with modern instrumentation. We used a flute, a bass clarinet, a trumpet, a clarinet, drums, a guitar, vibes and a piano.
Author:
Tennessee Ford
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I did play every little note on the guitar on that record.
Author:
Lita Ford
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There was just no way I could leave this little Martin guitar in my apartment overnight or even in the afternoon, and expect to find it there when I got back.
Author:
Steve Forbert
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There's just not a lot of guys around playing like that these days; a lot of steel players are plugging into stomp boxes, trying to sound like Jeff Beck on a steel guitar.
Author:
John Fogerty
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The invention of Bob Dylan with his guitar belongs in its way to the same kind of tradition of something meant to be heard, as the songs of Homer.
Author:
Robert Fitzgerald
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I play piano and trumpet. I studied classical guitar.
Author:
Mike Figgis
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James Brown is the reason I play guitar.
Author:
Kevin Eubanks
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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.
Author:
Brian Eno
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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.
Author:
Brian Eno
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I don't really know why I chose bass except that it was different than guitar.
Author:
Trevor Dunn
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So I'll set a cycle in motion and pop it into record and I'll lay down a drum pattern, a bass line, a keyboard and guitar part, and once the groove is going I launch into the song and sing my song over the top.
Author:
Thomas Dolby
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I've looked at photographs of myself during concerts and it sometimes looks as if I'm in a fencing move, with a guitar in my hands instead of a sword.
Author:
Neil Diamond
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My guitar is really tempermental. I don't give up on it though, I'm close to my guitar!
Author:
Iris DeMent
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You can be a singer, and you can be a guitar player, but putting them together is another animal.
Author:
Gavin DeGraw
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I always wanted a guitar. I always wanted to be a cowboy singer because I also listened to Hank Williams, and he would always sing these neat romantic songs.
Author:
Dick Dale
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The kids called me King of the Surf Guitar. I surfed sunup to sundown.
Author:
Dick Dale
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I've got holes in my guitar.
Author:
Dick Dale
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I can play rhythm guitar. I know how to hold a guitar and strum it.
Author:
Jamie Curtis
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When you tune your guitar in a different way, it lends itself to a new way of looking at your songwriting.
Author:
Sheryl Crow
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If you can't play it on an acoustic guitar or a grand piano then it's not a song.
Author:
Christopher Cross
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It's the faster bands that made me want to play guitar, bands like The Jam.
Author:
Graham Coxon
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Owning a handgun doesn't make you armed any more than owning a guitar makes you a musician.
Author:
Jeff Cooper
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I just managed to convince my grandmother that it was a worth while that was something to do, you know, and when I did finally get the guitar, it didn't seem that difficult to me, to be able to make a good noise out of it.
Author:
Eric Clapton
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Oh yeah, I mean, it wasn't a very good guitar, most good guitars have got thrust rods in the necks that you can adjust or that'll keep them in shape, you know keep them straight. This one just, well it turned into a bow and arrow after a couple of months.
Author:
Eric Clapton
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The voices on the record, that was trying to treat my voice like guitar players treat guitar tones.
Author:
Gary Cherone
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We didn't have any instruments, so I had to use my guitar.
Author:
Maybelle Carter
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The guitar chose me.
Author:
Charlie Byrd
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In the last couple of years I've been picking up my guitar again.
Author:
Peabo Bryson
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Yes, I took up the guitar when I was about 14 or 15, in high school.
Author:
Beau Bridges
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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.
Author:
Tommy Bolin
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I had given up the guitar between '75 and '78. I completely lost interest. I was sick of hearing other guitar players and I was tired of my tunes.
Author:
Ritchie Blackmore
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Pete Townshend used to crash chords and let the guitar feed back. He's overrated.
Author:
Ritchie Blackmore
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If you make it sound too much like a synth, it will just sound like a guitar part played on a synth.
Author:
Daisy Berkowitz
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Experimenting with different sounds is great, but when it comes down to it, you're still playing a guitar.
Author:
Daisy Berkowitz
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Nobody seems to play Yamaha electrics, but it's the best guitar I own.
Author:
Daisy Berkowitz
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There will be some tracks on the next album which that will consist of mostly noise and feedback, whereas others may just have guitar parts and samples.
Author:
Daisy Berkowitz
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The greatest guitar player in the world today for me is Paco de Lucia, who is actually Spanish.
Author:
George Benson
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I have no secrets; all of these things have been discussed at length in guitar magazines over the years but are far too elaborate to cover in one article.
Author:
Adrian Belew
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I was left with an urge to make the guitar sound like things it shouldn't be able to sound like.
Author:
Adrian Belew
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Currently I'm working with Parker Fly on a new Midi guitar to arrive next year.
Author:
Adrian Belew
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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 Armstrong
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That was the reasoning behind learning to play bass, and then after that it was more like it was neat to play songs together - for me to play bass and for him to play guitar.
Author:
Tom Araya
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For me it always comes down to what is a good song and I'm very old fashioned in the way that I like to make songs that have something classic about them whether you can play them with an orchestra or an electro synthesizer or an acoustic guitar.
Author:
Marc Almond
