A Quote by Trombone Shorty

I'm always trying to emulate guitar. Especially when I'm playing the trombone, that's what I think about. Like, I listen to guitar players every day: Warren Haynes, Lenny Kravitz, Prince, different people. And I'm always trying to find out a way how I can get my trombone to sound like that.
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.
The thing that influenced me most was the way Tommy played his trombone. It was my idea to make my voice work in the same way as a trombone or violin-not sounding like them, but "playing" the voice like those instrumentalists.
I didn't go to guitar school and I don't know how to play chords, but I can do it in my own way and I think sometimes that will piss off some guitar players who sit around playing their stuff all day long and then there are people who like that.
One interesting thing - I play bass and guitar and stuff like that. I know those instruments really well. But I don't know how to play clarinet or trombone or any of these other instruments. I don't actually know how to play ukulele even though I've played it a lot in the past. Because of the weird tuning it's not exactly like a guitar. That's one of the reasons I like that instrument - it makes for surprises. It's not so predictable as the bass or the guitar is for me.
I'd like to be able to get more girls to play guitar. I think with a girl playing electric guitar, sometimes it's seen a bit like a guy doing ballet. All the people I learned guitar from have been guys. There are some great female players, like Bonnie Raitt and Jennifer Batten, but very few.
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!
Lenny Breau is one of the true geniuses of the guitar. I suppose he is a musician's musician. His knowledge of the instrument and the music is so vast, and I think that's what knocks people out about him. But he's such a tasty player too. I think if Chopin had played guitar, he would have sounded like Lenny Breau.
I played a lot of keyboards, but I really wanted to produce the sound that was in my head that I was trying to emulate on the keys. I wanted to do it for real. And it makes me look at the keys in a different way. So it's like I'm looking at the guitar and bass more like meat and potatoes and keys like coloring over top of it, you know.
One day you pick up the guitar and you feel like a great master, and the next day you feel like a fool. It’s because we’re different every day, but the guitar is always the same…beautiful.
I don't sing. I played guitar for a while. I'm not great, I'm not Lenny Kravitz by any means, but I do like to strum.
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.
I may be taking a different approach, being a guy leading a band with a trombone, but if you take that out of it and put in a guitar or keyboard, it would be considered funk-rock music.
I always liked playing music and I always wanted to be good at playing guitar. I always saw myself as an old man living in the mountains playing a guitar, but I didn't really turn that into a desire to be a professional musician or a singer or a rock star or anything like that.
Prince is extremely soulful, but he can get real rock-'n'-rollish. So can Lenny Kravitz. Lenny's real soulful but he's got that rock with him, too. On the whole, I guess black folks ain't trying to handle rock-'n'-roll, really.
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.
I chose the trombone because the trombone players in the marching band got to be up front with the majorettes (because of the slides) and I loved that!
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