Dimebag Darrell Quotes

I destroyed a lot of guitars trying to get them to do what I wanted, but I learned something from every guitar I tore apart, and discovered even more things. Things like if the string is not straight from the bridge saddle to the nut, you're going to have friction.

Chromamatic' is actually about changing the strings on my guitar and tuning my guitar.

After a couple of failed attempts, I came up with a weird tuning where I was dropping the G string down a step so that it became a seventh, and it got me to a place where I could play all these figures fairly easily. It was not an easy thing to work out.

Besides being a guitar player, I'm a big fan of the guitar. I love that damn instrument.

I'm not into that Keith Richard trip of having all those guitars in different tunings. I never liked the Rolling Stones much anyway.

Using string bends instead of just playing regular, unbent notes can definitely help give certain riffs a cooler, heavier edge.

The guitar is a funny instrument because you have bendable strings and distortion - there's a potential for noise. It is more exposing. Actually controlling the instrument, using proper vibrato, bending notes in tune, not fretting too hard, controlling the noise is a skill in itself that takes many years.

If you are having trouble making a chord, get a book, that is how I learned. There are guitar tuning apps so you can tune your guitar, and just learn how to play along with your records. And it's great to be able to play along with another musician. That is like trial by fire.

The guitar to me, from the classical/gut-string guitar right through to Hendrix, et cetera, has all the range [of sound]. Within those six strings it is incredible what one can get sound-wise. It's just down to imagination, really.

An accent has to do with the way your mouth works and the sounds that come out of your head, but somehow it informs everything about you.

I fingerpick a lot because I can get more of a range of feeling from the guitar than I can when I bash away with a pick.

The voice is a human sound which nothing inanimate can perfectly imitate. It has an authority and an insinuating property which writing lacks. It is not merely so much air, but air modulated and impregnated with life.

Most people, when they talk fast, they get flat.

A guitar is just theoretically built wrong. Each string is an interval of fourths, and then the B string is off. Theoretically, that's not right, all the strings should be off.

I've seen a lot of people getting into Jazzmasters because of me, and, well, people don't know what they're in for. I mean if you're looking for endless sustain, you're going to have to get it out of your hands (laughs). Because a saxophonist gets it out of his breath. You've got to work for it on the guitar - it means you have to pull it out of yourself, otherwise, what are you doing? You end up playing a lot of noise or scale exercises.

I guess the solo from 'Achilles Last Stand' is in the same tradition as the solo from 'Stairway to Heaven'...it is on that level to me.

The way I play guitar is very, very hard and I bloody myself incredibly without the tape. And the nails are my picks.

One of the things that fascinates me is the music of speech.

What interested me about Chuck Berry was the way he could step out of the rhythm part with such ease, throwing in a nice, simple riff, and then drop straight into the feel of it again. We used to play a lot more rhythm stuff. We'd do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. You can't go into a shop and ask for a "lead guitar". You're a guitar player, and you play a guitar.

Holdsworth is so damned good that I can't cop anything. I can't understand what he's doing. I've got to do this [does two-hand tapping], whereas he'll do it with one hand.

I never write. Never! I do not even remember if I can write … This is a true freestyle in general. I put a beat, I said some stuff, I retain ideas, I do it again, with a particular intonation, I test, and especially I record live.

I find it very strange doing voiceover stuff, because you find you have to enunciate and make stupid faces in order for the point to make sense, because it's playing against the deadpan Simpson face. If you're just speaking in the regular way you speak, it will sound really boring.

I notice guys playing the piano playing a part up here and a part down there, and I wandered why couldn't I do that on the guitar?

Saying you love something out loud with the wrong intonation in your face can damn you and destroy what you're working on.

"I've learned what's funny verbally ain't so funny on e-mail: They don't hear your intonations. Melissa broke up with somebody over that. She tried to tell him: "That was a joke!" But he just didn't get it. Mick Jagger said, "F- 'em if they don't get the joke." And I love him. That comes with age: Knowing it's their problem, not mine."