Joe Bonamassa Quotes

I'm not that fluid when it comes to scales and modes. I just pick up the guitar and play. It's all about exploration: just tune the guitar any way you want and start playing.

I am a self-taught guitarist. I just try to piece together passages that have some melodic value!

My dad had a guitar that he gave me. I went to Walmart and bought a chord chart and hung it up in my room, and I was just trying to figure out how to play the guitar and put words with what I was learning.

I've never been much of a guitarist. I mean, I've played forever, but I was always more of a rhythm kind of guy. I don't read music.

I can play just about any keyboard but I can't read or write a note.

I've grown up with a piano in the house, and that's where I started to be able to learn things by ear. Guitar kind of happened, and I was using it just for writing at first. Then, I was writing so much that I began to realise that I knew how to play, and that's when I started getting nerdy about it.

I play guitar and I'm always trying to find out the latest kinds of riffs.

What happens is people go, 'I want to play the guitar,' and the first thing they do is hit Google: 'How can I play this?' and the next thing you know, you've learned all these tricks, but you've never learned how to play rhythm guitar with a groove.

The piano is where everything starts and ends. Everything is based off of it. If you understand that, you wind up understanding a lot more in all other instruments. For me, it had always been something important to try and learn.

You never learn everything on that guitar neck.

I can't read a note of music. I just do it all from ear.

I taught myself how to play guitar - pretty badly, but I knew enough about music to start to figure it out.

I'm learning on the guitar all the time.

I learned how to play guitar by playing along to Jane's Addiction records and Smashing Pumpkins records, things you can totally hear if you listen to my guitar.

What I try to impart to a musician is to really try to practice the instrument in a really sincere way. Learn as much about music as you possibly can. Learn composition. Study to try to create compositions of your own and put your own personal touch on your music.

The ultimate guitar players can play every scale in the book.

I think my knowledge of music theory is rooted in jazz theory, and a lot of the writers of standards - Rodgers and Hart, and Gershwin.

I'm a self-taught musician aside from what I've been able to pick up from other players.

We always had a guitar at home, but it wasn't until I was 14 when I picked it up myself when my father handed me these sheets of music of the Beatles and some other classics. That's where I learned all the chords and learned how to play and sing at the same time.

Because my musical training has been limited, I've never been restricted by what technical musicians might call a song.

I taught myself to play the guitar by listening to Paul Simon records, working it out note by note. He is an incredibly intelligent musician. He's not someone who has a natural outpouring of melody like McCartney or Dylan, who are just terribly prolific with musical ideas.

I haven't learned anything new on guitar since high school. And I think it's time to learn something.

I don't think that you can write music if you don't know how to play an instrument. You have to know the basics, then you can go forward.

I have no guitar technique.

I play piano and guitar. Acoustic guitar. I tried studying classical guitar when I was 16 but it got really hard. I could never play a lead to save my life.