Rick Nielsen Quotes

I started playing guitar before I can really remember, and I started writing really early, too.

I've been writing and composing songs since I was 5 years old.

If I get an idea for a song, I have a melody for it. I'm a musician first. I'm not limited by the fretboard.

I definitely always thought of myself as a songwriter before a singer.

I like to see myself as a composer first and only then as a singer.

I've actually had a melody on my guitar since the day I learned how to play it, back when I was 7. And for some reason I can't add lyrics to it.

To me, the guitar is a tool for songwriting, and it's fun, too. The day that it's not fun, that's when I'm not gonna play guitar anymore.

I didn't write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn't.

My favorite travel pastime is writing music, either with my guitar or on my computer.

I sit down and create atmospheres, start playing guitar or piano and just sing whatever comes out of my mouth.

When I graduated high school, I bought a guitar and, at first, didn't really think I'd get into the songwriting thing as much as I did. But after learning a few songs of other people's to play on the guitar, I got bored with that and just started writing songs on my own, and that's kinda how it came about.

I started writing songs when I was 10. It was a natural way to express myself as a kid. It wasn't until I started listening to jazz, joined the choir and picked up a guitar that my little hobby became something far more serious.

I started playing guitar when I was 6 or 7 years old, and I think that, within a week of getting my first guitar, I started writing music. I just love it.

I wanted to be able to play guitar. I wanted to be able to make music hurt.

I picked up the guitar at 11, but even before then, I was writing songs on the organ.

I think its so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn't exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no ones ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips.

I'm a crap guitarist and I find it really hard writing on my own.

As a musician, I don't think I'm the greatest guitar player. I'm a bigger fan of the drums than I am the guitar; I just happen to play guitar. I play drums almost every day at my house. I wrote a lot of songs behind the drum kit, just having the music and vocals in my head and playing the rhythm.

Ever since Two Daughters I've been composing my own music.

I borrowed a guitar at age 16 and taught myself to play because I wanted to write songs.

If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.

I love the pioneers like Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, but when I write music, it comes out in my own way.

Composing is what I love most from what I do. Each genre has a unique expression that you cannot supplant with another. All the records co-inspire each other though they are not tied conceptually in any way to another.

I actually write more on guitar than I do on piano.

I like composing music, but I love being with my family.