Rory Gallagher Quotes

The combination of experience and experimentation will ultimately yield a personal sound.

I prefer to think of myself as a musician who is still learning and trying to do something every time out.

Once you have an established song, you can really come out of your shell and experiment with the sound you want to make.

You're a constant student, as a musician.

What drew me to the violin was mastering the instrument technically, which I'm continuing to do. You want to push boundaries, to not always be in your comfort zone. If you don't, you get stale. So you have to find areas of growth.

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.

I've been making music for a long time, since I was very young, but at the same time, I'm still exploring what works for me. I feel like I'm just starting out.

I played with the same band for years and years and there's a beauty to having one solid core that you keep exploring. On the other hand, it's nice to throw yourself in different situations where you find out things about your own resources.

I've seen and learned enough to keep my music fresh and spread out.

As a musician, I look for certain things that stimulate me. And what I look for is something that's an evolution on a particular genre that I never heard before.

I really practiced hard and got to a certain level of technical proficiency. I overcame some of my limitations. I was a hard-working, dedicated bassoonist, but I have to say I'm not a natural musician.

It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play.

I want a long career in music, so you've gotta keep trying things out; it's gotta get progressively better.

The best way for me to teach myself an instrument is to just jam on it, and sound awful sometimes, and sound great other times.

The day I stop learning and I don't try to make myself better on the guitar, that's the day I hang it up and say, 'Goodbye.'

We're not complete prodigies musically and as a band together it takes more and more work to find something new and special.

Once you start out, you are kind of finding out who you are, and then by the time you get to the second album or you've been touring a lot, doing live shows or whatever, the sound starts to shift slightly to something that is more the true essence of what the band really is.

I love stretching myself musically.

Now, when we first started, I would be playing something good and then feel like I wasn't doing the right thing and launch into some idiotic cliche. Luckily for me, Bobby was patient.

I feel like that I'm learning all the time. I'm learning from new artists, from established artists... every time I listen to '70s rock 'n' roll records, I'm learning. And I think that I'm just now starting to get a hold on what I do.

I think that every band tries to mature their sound through their existence, you know?

Music is all about wanting to be better at it.

A lot of times, when a band finds success with a certain style or sound, they have a really hard time breaking away from that to grow as artists.

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 don't care how famous a guitarist is, he ain't learned everything. There's always somewhere to go, something to mash up, but he ain't found it yet. You never learn everything on that guitar neck.