A Quote by Daniel Rossen
I was pillaging a lot of music that had nothing to do with guitar playing, using a lot of strange tunings and voicings and chord structures that aren't really that natural to the guitar; I ended up developing a harmonic palette that's not particularly natural to the guitar because I was always trying to make my guitar sound like something else.
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My vocation is more in composition really than anything else-building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army. ... I always felt if we were going in to do an album, there should already be a lot of structure already made up so we could get on with that and see what else happened. ... I always believed in the music we did and that's why it was uncompromising. ... I don't think the critics could understand what we were doing.
My vocation is more in composition really than anything else - building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army.
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.
In high school, I decided I wanted to learn guitar, so I picked it up and starting teaching myself some basic chords and started playing with friends. Guitar inherently lends itself to be guitar music, especially when you're not good at guitar.
My father had played the guitar when he was young, and my uncle Jack had worked for Kalamazoo, before the war, developing guitar pickups. So there was a kind of family thing about the guitar, although it was considered something of an anomaly then.
Growing up, I was listening to a lot of Metallica, a lot of instrumental guitar music because I started out as a guitar player.
The use of electronics is a natural extension of the instrument - it is an electric guitar. So we guitarists have been plugging into something since 1931, and we are not about to stop now. Current advances in technology means we can have a huge array of sounds at our fingertips, and this offers amazing possibilities to the contemporary composer. It is always a guitar (I don't play synthesizer) but it becomes something else all together - more like sculpting sound in real time using metal wires, 5 fingers and a pick.
I'm a guitar player. I've carved out my own style of guitar music, so I don't look for inspiration with playing guitar.
I feel some allegiance to pushing electric-guitar music into a different realm, somewhere that isn't retrospective. There's a lot of guitar bands that are a tribute to the 1970s or the Nineties. I want to experiment with guitar music more.
If you have a great-sounding guitar that's a quality instrument and a good amp, and you know how to make the guitar talk, that's the key. It starts with the guitar and knowing what it should sound and feel like.
There is no reason why a guitar player makes the guitar-playing faces. It doesn't help you play guitar. You've not improved your skills. It's because you're up onstage, and the natural inclination is to put on a show. The rock guy faces are just as much of a front or a show as us wearing crazy makeup. It's just a different scale.
For me, the guitar was just a tool to make songs. I started when I was 10 - I learned what I had to learn to get my ideas across. I always felt I was a weak guitar player, but now I realize with the finger-picking stuff, I actually know how to do what I do with my songs, but I couldn't step in and be an overall guitar player. But my guitar playing has always been driven by the need to write songs.
I couldn't sing without a guitar. I like the way it feels to sing and be holding a guitar, even if I'm not playing it that much. All my idols that I grew up liking always had a guitar on them, but they didn't play it - Buddy Holly, John Lennon, Lou Reed, Elvis Costello. It's like having a partner with you.
The gut-strung guitar, the classical guitar, that is a whole different world on its own. When you think what the guitar can do and what every individual player does with a guitar, everyone has their own identity coming through the guitar.
I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I'd shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can't pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that's how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.
My first guitar was like a campfire guitar. And it was left at a house that my family had moved into... and the guitar was at the house. It was all strung up. It's normally something that would be beyond a bit of rubbish.
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