Nita Strauss Quotes

For what I can imagine and feel and think and hear, I can hardly do anything on the acoustic bass. It used to be just pure frustration of imagining so much more and being able to get to a certain level of execution.

I've never mastered the guitar. Either I was playing it, or it was playing me; it depends how you look at it. As a kid, the only things I had to do was go to school, do my homework, and play guitar.

Everyone has to start somewhere! I certainly didn't sound great when I first started playing, and I remember all my guitar teachers, both good and bad, and what it felt like to struggle with even the simplest of things.

The biggest challenge for me was Get Rhythm. I don't know why.

I got bored with the old way - it came too easy. I worked until I could play and chord changes at any tempo in any key, and then said 'What else is there?' Now I'm finding out.

After my second-to-last record, 'The Greatest', I had gone on tour for a while, and I didn't play an instrument for about five years. And I got kind of - it's not self-esteem or whatever, or anger toward myself - but disappointed in myself that I hadn't been challenging myself to learn musically.

I started playing the guitar and singing at about 11 or 12.

There's something very particular about the kind of rage you feel when you're alone in a practice room by yourself, unable to master a simple thing like a rudiment.

To play music, you have to understand it. I didn't understand 'Topographic Oceans.' That's why I hardly played on it. It frustrated me no end - and playing the whole thing on tour, I got farther and farther away from it.

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.

The first guitar I ever had was a gut-string Spanish guitar, and I couldn't really get the hang of it. I was only 13, and I talked my grandparents into buying it for me. I tried and tried and tried, but got nowhere with it.

When I have a chunk of time that I can really dedicate to music, I really want to get into it. I want to do some really hard stuff and push myself.

You can read all the textbooks and listen to all the records, but you have to play with musicians that are better than you.

I did pick up a guitar once, but the strings hurt my fingers so I put it down again.

I can't read a note. I have lots of discipline, but I can't sit still at any instrument.

It's very important to go through periods where you sound just rotten and you know it, and you have to persevere or give up.

I noticed a lot of guitar players neglected the rhythm part of rhythm guitar and decided I would try to focus in that. As my skill and knowledge of the instrument grew, I found lead started to come naturally. Sometimes I play guitar like a frustrated drummer. Ha ha!

I just want to be a better guitar player, really.

When I was 11 years old, I started playing guitar.

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

All of my music teachers gave up on me one by one because I couldn't read music.

It's amazing how a lot of the metal guys have never strummed! And it's not that challenging, but it really opens up a lot of doors in ways they might not have imagined.

After 35 years of bone-crushing rock guitar playing, I'm finally starting to get my head out of the harmonic sand and learning how to play over chord changes.

After playing for 40 years, I've been able to evolve the way I see the fretboard and how I hear the guitar in my head.

From when I young, a lot of the things I grappled with, with instruments, was how large they were. When someone places a large guitar in your lap, it's hard - I'd learned how to play a guitar when I was a kid, but I never really felt like I was in control.