Ritchie Blackmore Quotes

A guitar is so tactile, and when you're playing bends - and bending notes is a big part of my style - there are so many notes within the note you're bending from and the note you're bending up to.

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.

I've always thought that the act of playing the guitar was the act of trying to make a point of playing the guitar.

My original interests and intentions in guitar playing were primarily created on quality of tone, for instance, the way the instrument could be made to echo or simulate the human voice.

Basically, I use hammer-ons and pull-offs.

It's a magical thing, the guitar. It allows you to be the whole band in one, to play rhythm and melody, sing over the top. And as an instrument for solos, you can bend notes, draw emotional content out of tiny movements, vibratos and tonal things which even a piano can't do.

To make harmonics scream, I first dump my Floyd Rose real quick, hit a harmonic with my left hand while the string is still flapping, and then use the bar to pull it up to the pitch I wanna hit.

The best slide guitar, unless you're playing the Muddy Waters-style, is the old '52 Goldtop Les Paul.

I never use pull-offs because I don't like the sort of 'meow' sound they make with the string being deflected sideways.

From the start, I held the pick in an unusual way. I used to bend my thumb way back in order to get a good angle for fast playing. I played that way for 10 years.

Sweep picking is when the right hand sweeps down and up the strings in succession. But when you do sweep picking, one note rings into the next, and it sounds almost like you're playing a chord, and that's exactly what you don't want.

It's so satisfying as a guitar player to play stuff that's related to the blues.

What interested me about Chuck Berry was the way he could step out of the rhythm part with such ease, throwing in a nice, simple riff, and then drop straight into the feel of it again. We used to play a lot more rhythm stuff. We'd do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. You can't go into a shop and ask for a "lead guitar". You're a guitar player, and you play a guitar.

When you break out the acoustic guitar, the words are the focal point unless you're the Jimi Hendrix of the acoustic guitar. So the words have to have meaning.

I discovered early on that I was more of a strummer than a picker.

Using string bends instead of just playing regular, unbent notes can definitely help give certain riffs a cooler, heavier edge.

I consider descending chromatic lines and arpeggiated chords basic skills learned by any student of the guitar.

I'm not trying to be flippant here, but I just play the guitar, don't I? That is my characteristic, and it's my identity as you hear it.

There's a wide spectrum of possibilities in how to deliver a song.

I've started to look at guitar playing from more than just a standpoint of using certain modes and techniques.

Everything Paul Kossoff did came from his fingers and went right into the amp. He was his own effects unit.

One day, I would love to learn how to play piano and guitar.

And I only really like to play the acoustic guitar.

Steve Morse is a very good guitar player, but he's American, and he's using humbucker pickups. If you ask me, those two are not good.

I am trying to build the biggest callus possible on my first finger so I can do one-finger bends and vibrato like B.B. King.