Jake Shimabukuro Quotes

The thing about the banjo is when you first hear it, it strikes many people as what's that? There's something very compelling about it to certain people.

The piano may do for love-sick girls who lace themselves to skeletons, and lunch on chalk, pickles and slate pencils, but give me the banjo.

The violin is basically made of a wood box and four main strings.

You can muck around with different guitars for certain bits, but you have to have your own sound. That's your benchmark, that's your sound. I also play a Black Beauty. It sounds amazing.

I wasn't really an old-time breakdown fiddler.

I love the ukulele. It's got a beautiful, melodic tone to it. There's something innocent and romantic, and it's just a grand instrument to play.

No, but a cello is the perfect string bass for an accordion. Works with it beautifully.

How could I? I only know two tunes. One of them is Yankee Doodle. The other isn't.

The guitar is the most beautiful of all instruments.

There's nothing purer than Janette Carter with an autoharp.

I didn't actually start playing the banjo until I was in high school.

The banjo is such a happy instrument--you can't play a sad song on the banjo - it always comes out so cheerful.

The sound of the harpsichord resembles that of a bird-cage played with toasting-forks.

What is a harp but an oversized cheese slicer with cultural pretensions?

There's not much you can do with a ukulele that doesn't sound happy.

The piano is an orchestra with 88...... things, you know

The Ultimate Rule ought to be: 'If it sounds GOOD to you, it's bitchin'; if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's shitty. The more your musical experience, the easier it is to define for yourself what you like and what you don't like. American radio listeners, raised on a diet of _____ (fill in the blank), have experienced a musical universe so small they cannot begin to know what they like.

When one plays a Steinway, there is a warmth and nobility in the sound that is unequalled by any other instrument.

Give me a mandolin and I'll play you rock 'n' roll.

I first heard the banjo on the Beverly Hillbillies, and from then on I was banjo-conscious. But I didn't actually get one until my grandfather gave me one, almost by mistake. He knew I was playing a little bit of guitar. He saw a banjo at a flea market and bought it. I took it home with me and just never put it down. I was fifteen.

A gut-string classical Spanish guitar, a sweet, lovely little lady. The smell of it. Even now, to open a guitar case, when it's an old wooden guitar, I could crawl in and close the lid.

A computer is like a violin. You can imagine a novice trying first a phonograph and then a violin. The latter, he says, sounds terrible. That is the argument we have heard from our humanists and most of our computer scientists. Computer programs are good, they say, for particular purposes, but they aren’t flexible. Neither is a violin, or a typewriter, until you learn how to use it.

The harp sounds at each passing breeze, but that does not mean the tune is masterfully played.

I love Don Williams records. And old Ralph Stanley and Bill Monroe.

There's something fundamental to the harp that has retained its appeal my whole life. It's an instrument I am just in love with.