Top 1200 Classical Guitar Quotes & Sayings - Page 5

I didn't know how to play guitar until I was 21, but from the moment I was good enough on guitar to even put one song together, I kind of billed myself as an artist.

People didn't know I played guitar on all the hit records I had. I've never been in an acoustic guitar magazine and I'd put myself up against anybody.

As a professional cellist, I go to mostly classical concerts because that's the music I play, but I am also always trying to find out who the voices of our time are. I attend a spectrum of concerts that are close to classical - anything from Wynton Marsalis to Renee Fleming.

Outside India, Chris Brown, Bruno Mars, Beyonce, and Rihanna are my favourites. I also like Justin Bieber. I like Western jazz and pop. Been a classical singer, I have sung a song 'Auliya,' a fusion of Western and Indian classical.

Classical - perhaps I should say 'orchestral' - music is so digital, so cut up, rhythmically, pitchwise and in terms of the roles of the musicians. It's all in little boxes. The reason you get child prodigies in chess, arithmetic, and classical composition is that they are all worlds of discontinuous, parceled-up possibilities.

I'm a big fan of other guitar players, Duane Allman and tons of them, but I don't really love totally guitar-specific albums.

Jimi Hendrix is one of the main influences on why I wanted to play guitar. He really shook me. I think it was his whole style - the look and what he did with the guitar.

My dad is a huge rock and roll lead guitar fan. I didn't even really know that until recently. Everything has to have a guitar solo in it.

We weren't listening to guitar bands, we were thoroughly ashamed of being a guitar band. So we bought loads of keyboards and learned how to use them, and when we got bored we went back to guitars.

I would not want the limitations held by the name of a classical musician. I want many people to enjoy my music much beyond just classical music fans. I think the term, 'violinist,' keeps me distant from the audience. I want to communicate with them more.

These days, my main guitar amps have been Magnatone. They're beautiful. Magnatones have actual tremolo, which I recently learned about guitar amps. Often what guitar amps call vibrato is really just a volume Up and Down. But Magnatone has a true vibrato, which is pitch bending. And so, it's just a lush sound.

I don't mind Ed Sheeran, but I wouldn't want to be compared to a guy that builds his song around a guitar, since we do not have a guitar in our band.

In the studio, we sometimes will add bass or some other stuff, like more layers of the same guitar part that's already there, but ultimately, the sound is about guitar and drums.

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.

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.

I tend to like the traditional sound: three-part harmonies, guitar, and piano. I mean, a well-played guitar is a joy forever... or something.

And a lot of the technique and the little T-Bone phrases that define his style, Chuck Berry, when he rearranged the beat, they became rock 'n roll guitar licks. So in essence, T-Bone was not only the first electric blues guitar player, but he was the first electric rock 'n roll guitar player, really.

For my 23rd birthday, I received a nylon string guitar. I told myself that if I could play Eric Clapton's 'Tears In Heaven,' then I could play the guitar. I practised every chance I got, driving my housemates insane, until several weeks later I had a shaky version of the song down. I wrote my first song on the guitar a few weeks after that.

I am, by nature, a guitar player... I learned all of these other instruments around that, and around the theory that I built learning the guitar.

I think for a classical musician the goal is the same as an electronic musician. A very good professional classical musician must not think about technique.

I'd probably get a much quicker and better result if I went to a really great guitar player for a certain style of guitar that I have a problem doing. But there is a challenge in figuring out if I can do that myself.

I guess my guitar parts are usually precise, but the execution of those parts is downright treacherous, since I'm not very good on guitar.

I could care less about sitting around and practicing the guitar for hours a day and trying to be the best guitar player on the planet.

We've got an electric organ, a sax, drums, guitar and bass guitar. We sound less like the Beatles than most of the groups.

I don't know if, in a previous life, I was, like, the embodiment of a guitar, because any time someone plays a guitar with the licks, I just resonate to it.

I'm not a 'practicing' musician anymore. I played bass and guitar. I still pick up a guitar around the house every once in awhile.

A lot of guitar players get stuck on a person ... before they find out who they really are ... every guitar player should remember be yourself - just let it rip.

I still play that guitar. It's a Martin D-18 with a clear pick guard. I've played that guitar on and off my TV shows for nearly 50 years.

Randy [ Rhoads] had small hands. Boy, could he play guitar. He became an even better guitar player after he died.

The cult of the instrument is O.K. for people who are mad about the guitar. But I love music. The guitar is just the instrument I happen to play.

I was learning guitar as the band was beginning, at least in terms of being a lead guitar player. I could write songs, but I couldn't really play solos.

I always think that, for me, being someone who comes out of electric guitar experimentation, the idea of playing acoustic guitar is, in itself, kind of a radical move.

Most of my music theory knowledge is based on piano. But I write on guitar a lot, too. I'm not a great guitar player by any means. I'm not a great instrumentalist. I play piano on stage. I don't play guitar on stage, but I use it to write quite a lot.

I used to have these reoccurring dreams that I played guitar, which I thought was so bizarre. It all sort of fit together at some point, and I said 'I want to play guitar.'

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.

I noticed a lot of guitar players neglected the rhythm part of rhythm guitar and decided I would try to focus in that.

If you ever ask me what my all-time dream character is, my answer will be Mia Tansen, the great composer-musician in Hindustani classical music. And ideally, the film should be directed by a person like Bhansali who is a great director and has a marvellous sense of classical music.

But when I was 12 or 13, I found the acoustic guitar and got into guitar music ultimately, like Black Motorcycle Club, obviously Neil Young, Crosby, Stills and Nash.

As a guitar player, I've been influenced by dance music - it was Crystal Method and The Prodigy back in the day. I would listen to those textures and try to approximate them on the electric guitar.

If a little kid picks up Guitar Hero and learns 'Smoke On The Water,' he soon finds out that if he wants the chicks to look at him, he'd better learn it on the guitar!

There are three virtuous styles of music; classical, jazz and heavy metal. I do love classical music but I don't listen to it much anymore and I never listen to metal, so I am not very interested in music that is difficult to play.

When I began, the guitar was en-closed in a vicious circle. There were no composers writing for the guitar, be-cause there were no virtuoso guitarists.

I know that the classical world has resisted film composers throwing their hat into the classical concert music ring. And you know I don't think that's totally without justification. I think sometimes it seems to me there is a built in automatic prejudice against the whole idea of it. And it's very difficult to overcome that stigma.

I played the guitar in ninth grade. My sister's friend went on a semester abroad, and she left the guitar at our house for nine months.

Being in a band with three guitar players, one thing you need to do is learn to make each guitar voice sound separate and identifiable.

Musically, I am still hooked and just hypnotized by the sound of the guitar itself. I mean, a guitar sounds good if you drop it on the floor.

A lot of my colleagues just don't really realize that they have to work in order to get the interest of an audience, especially with young kids, especially because it [classical music] is not that popular. You don't see it on TV, you don't hear it on radio, so you really gotta put an effort into promoting classical music.

I wanted to make an album where every song is kind of interacting - where you can't tell what's the string arrangement and what's the song. I guess that came out of going to college, majoring in music, studying classical music, and even as a kid, being really drawn to classical music.

I suppose my little Martin acoustic guitar is quickly becoming a prize possession. It's a lovely guitar. I bought it at the Cambridge Folk Festival in 2001 before I had cleaned up.

In my own musical existence I don't feel that being a guitar player is like the best thing on earth to be. I would rather be a balanced musician. Playing in a group, I'm tending to think more about the music and less about the guitar. That's just me getting older. I'm not interested in being a virtuoso guitar player or anything like that.

My foundation is acoustic guitar, and it is finger-picking and all of that and sort of an orchestral style of playing. Lead guitar came later, more out of the necessity to do so because of expectations in a particular situation.

When I got my first guitar, I played along with everything I heard that had guitar in it, like the Ramones, Nirvana and Sublime, as well as whatever hip-hop and R&B stuff was on the radio.

When we improvise freely - that is, without a structure - it tends to sound more like 20th century classical music, more like a classical ensemble improvising, as opposed to a free-jazz group, where you're more used to hearing saxophones honking.

I can't think of a greater guitar icon than someone who has the musical intellect to change what was there before and take music in another direction. That's a guitar hero for me.

I'm the youngest of three boys, and my oldest brother was super into Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton and played guitar. I wanted to be like him, so I asked for a guitar of my own for Christmas in '93.

When Lonnie Mack came out with the guitar instrumental "Memphis" I thought, Oh God, finally somebody we guitar players can relate to !

A lot of people ask how I ended up doing classical music given that I'm in a rock band. The truth is that it's the other way around. I was trained as a classical musician and then started playing in a rock band later.

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.

And if the world does turn, and if London burns, I'll be standing on the beach with my guitar. I want to be in a band, when I get to Heaven. Anyone can play guitar, and they won't be a nothing anymore.

Being a professional wrestler was never one of my goals in life. I always wanted to be some kind of entertainer. I used to want to be a rock singer or a guitar player but I can't sing and I can't play the guitar.