Lindsey Buckingham Quotes

Experimenting with different sounds is great, but when it comes down to it, you're still playing a guitar.

I started doing up-and-down strumming, basically to keep time and to play fast. As time went on, I started realizing other guitar players couldn't do it. I always went against the grain.

I never actually had a guitar lesson. I taught myself the guitar from piano exercise books, which led me to have a pretty good technique on the guitar and allowed me to find different ways to do things.

I like people that can strap on a guitar and don't sweat the fact that you have to come up with a song in an hour. I want to work with someone who won't feel like they have to play along with Jason Molina. I want them to just have the confidence.

And I'm always interested when other musicians are trying to discover new worlds of sound.

I wrote my first song at 6. I spent every day with the guitar, and I just made up songs.

All along, I did what I was comfortable doing, which was to play the music I enjoyed and try to stretch the parameters a bit. Country and bluegrass and folk were my foundation.

I found the blues too limiting, and classical was too disciplined.

As a guitar player, it's harder for me to impress somebody than it is to write a song that they like.

Just the type of music that was around at the same time as I was writing. Some of it was wicked, definitely. But there was just one direction which I thought could be pushed that no one was pushing.

So it's more the musician in me that makes me stretch out and try different things more than anything. But, like a lot of guitar players, I have one certain niche that's my thing that I'm better at than the others.

Your band members? Your band members don't want to be tied to a machine. They want to be playing. That's what the Beatles did. And the Beatles' stuff is timeless. That's what I would suggest. Just get back to sweating, playing hard, hammering, and having a blast.

Even now, at 82 years old, if I don't learn something every day, you know what I think? It's a day lost. Now, I don't practice every day. I just take the guitar, swear at it. But I should be swearing at myself. But I fool with music. I'm doing something musically all the time. And my ears are wide open for anything I can hear.

I was never a fan of open tunings, because some people will do that and fumble around. But that's not my jam.

I create little challenges for myself, like, 'Okay, whatever you do in this song, you've got to somehow work in Greek Cypriots,' or something like that.

A lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they're stuck in that safe place.

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 don't want to limit myself musically. It would be really limiting if we'd neglect something we really want to do, like explore other styles of music.

So the actual riffing came out of us just sitting there and doing it the way I think some people think we really did it, which is all spontaneously, and it really was.

For me, something will come in my head and I'll either end up calling my cell phone to record it, or I'll just pick my guitar up and see what comes out. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't. So there's really no set method behind it.

Until you learn to play what you want to hear, you're barking up the wrong tree.

What I look for in musicians is a sense of infinity.

Guitar playing isn't really for everybody.

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

My first instrument was my voice. I was always singing and writing melodies when I was a little kid. I just sort of taught myself whatever was around. If there were instruments around, I'd play them. I always liked the idea of not being shown but coming up with my own energetic connection to the instrument.