20th-century Guitarist Quotes

Mark Knopfler

Damon Hill

Andrés Segovia

Muddy Waters

Billie Joe Armstrong

Ry Cooder

Angus Young

The bass is the link between harmony and rhythm. It is the foundation of a band. It is what all the other instruments stand upon, but it is rarely recognized as that.

Los Angeles is not Mexico City, but we have many fine nightclubs and restaurants here. It is enough. One must not aim too high.

There is something about guitars—maybe something magical—when played right, which evokes past, mysterious, barely-conscious sentiments, both individual and universal.

John Fahey (musician)

This house is lonesome: my baby left me all alone. I said this house is lonesome, my sugar left me all alone. If your heart ain't rock, sugar, must be marble stone.

Blind Lemon Jefferson

Now, when I was a young boy,
At the age of five,
My mother said I'd be
The greatest man alive.
I'm a man.

I shoulda quit you a long time ago.
And I wouldn't a been here
down on the killin' floor.

Learning to play the guitar is a combination of mental and motor skill acquisition. And to develop motor skills, repetition is essensial... Whenever musicians have trouble executing a passage, they generally tend to blame themselves for not having enought talent. Actually, all that's wrong is they don't know where their fingers are supposed to go... You should learn the piece in your head before you play it. And when you do play it, play it so slow that therre's no possibility of making a mistake.

I used to practice scales, but I think mainly in positions. I do runs that go from position to position, basically around chord shapes. I can get around pretty easily from one position to another, and on a good night it sound pretty hot. I'll take chances. Sometimes I'll trip over myself, but most times I'm lucky.

The blues slows you down and gives you time to think.

Undeniably, the audience for improvisation, good or bad, active or passive, sympathetic or hostile, has a power that no other audience has. It can affect the creation of that which is being witnessed. And perhaps because of that possibility the audience for improvisation has a degree of intimacy with the music that is not achieved in any other situation.

Derek Bailey (guitarist)

Of the piano:

A large, rectangular monster that screams when you touch its teeth.

Andrés Segovia

Brand-new research suggests that the faster you take weight off, the longer you keep it off. Now that's a reason for dieters everywhere to rejoice.

I'm constantly thinking melodies. Now, to add interest to those melodies, obviously you have to know what things can be superimposed over a chord, and I will think of extended arpeggios and the upper estensions. If I'm playing very vertically, I will invariably start to include certaing passing notes which imply certain scales — like a melodic minor scale against a C minor chord, or diminished scales, something like that. But I'm not thinking of a scale at that specific moment. I'm thinking of the notes as surrounding that chord — because I know how each of the twelve notes in music sound against a C minor seventh, for instance.

What you've got to remember about Michael is that under that cold professional Germanic exterior beats a heart of stone.

Of Michael Schumacher

If someone can relate my guitar solo to an exercise in a book … that's no fun at all.

I think the way that you develop your own sound is you go through a process by which you imitate people sometimes very closely. With me, I would mimic people to the note. And then I think you form a collage of all these different players that you imitate, that you learn, and you form your own recipe. I think anybody that has an originality to them, it came from a pool of taking stuff from their predecessors.

One thing I learned a long time ago was my fretboard, in terms of all the scales in all the positions... You have to learn it - there are no two ways about it. I shift between positions so easily now that I really don't have to think about them much... I would suggest starting your scale education with the major and minor scales, and after that, diminished, augmented and whole-tone. Then depending on what kind of music you want to play, the modes should be learned. My theory about this kind of thing is that you should learn it all. Once you've learned it you can play whatever you want to play, and I think that your playing will be more advanced, and you'll have a better understanding of the instrument.

I practice all the scales. Everyone should know lots of scales. Actually, I feel there are only scales. What is a chord, if not the notes of a scale hooked together? There are several reasons for learning scales: one, the knowledge will unlock the neck for you — you'll learn the instrument; second, if I say I want you to improvise ofer Gmaj7+5, then go to Eaug9-5, then to bmaj7-5 —well, if you don't know, what those chords are in scale terms, you're lost. It's not all that difficult, but you have to be ready to apply yourself...

I've got no particular desire to play ten minute solos. Those were never valid anyway in my book — never. It was just a cheap way of building up a tension in the audience... A solo should do something; it shouldn't just be there as a cosmetic. It should have some aim, take the tune somewhere. I'm not saying I can do it, but I try and take the tune somewhere.

A guy walks up to me and asks 'What's Punk?'. So I kick over a garbage can and say 'That's punk!'. So he kicks over the garbage can and says 'That's Punk?', and I say 'No that's trendy!'

Billie Joe Armstrong

I loved playing the guitar and I knew I was pretty good at it, so that's what I wanted to do with my life.

He was just there, looking fantastic... the bastard.

There ain't no cure for the summertime blues.

That ain't working, that's the way you do it
Get your money for nothing and chicks for free.

Music is the cup which holds the wine of silence. Sound is that cup, but empty. Noise is that cup, but broken.