Dimebag Darrell Quotes

If you play more than two chords, you're showing off.

There's only seven chords, so you got to use the same ones over and over. It's all in what you do with them.

When I was first learning songs, I'd have a favorite song, and I'd take the chords and twist them around. I'd learn the chords and then play them backward. That was my first experimenting with writing a song.

I use a lot more chords than most organists and I'm careful to phrase them with the guitar.

For me, theory has always opened things up to where I can walk into a room and just by hearing something I know exactly where to go on the guitar. I have a better time playing because I have a variety of colors to bring to the table.

I use some pretty radical harmonics at the beginning of 'Heresy.'

I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn't play it. I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used. I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing.

As the chord changes go by, I don't so much think about a static chord voicing changing. I just see the notes on the neck change.

Lately, I love creating ideas on my acoustic guitar. I sit in my living room for hours trying different chords.

I always say that to compose is to think. Playing is good, it's useful, but it's how your intellect puts the ideas together that will bring hands to write or to play. So, it's really a combination of many things; hearing sounds, hearing layers of counterpoints, of chords.

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

Neil Young does throw in a major seven chord here and there, so if you're a new guitar player learning Neil Young songs, you'll learn some seven chords, and some different positions. Nothing too complicated, just enough to kind of open up your knowledge a little bit.

I write in all keys. I've always written in all keys. I've probably written a lot of songs in A.

Music has a poetry of its own, and that poetry is called melody.

You have to know composition to be a good improviser.

The more melodies and chord changes, the less good it is for the clubs, but the better it is for radio, because it makes it really emotional.

I love classical music; I love the way it's worked... all those chord sequences so I often use that sort of effect in my solos.

There is no such thing as a wrong note.

Composing gives me a chance to work in multiple dimensions and helps me pare down my melodies into what is essential. Learning new skills has always energized me and scoring has opened up a world of sonic possibilities.

I grew up with a piano, and my aunt taught me chords. I played with bands in high school and I could do like, C chord, G chord, D chord; really simple, rhythm piano.

I've never really been schooled in music theory. I'm a guitar player, and I attack the guitar in a certain way that it not fully unique to me, but it's more unique that some other people.

Scales played in the correct musical way are very exciting and rewarding.

I spent many years trying to write a lot like Ben Folds or John Lennon or Rivers Cuomo. I think that's healthy when you're learning to write and seeing how chords fit together and how songs take shape.

I like to start with an idea, but then again, I might be sitting at the keyboard, and just playing a bunch of chords that sound cool together, and something just inspires an idea from that.

I consider descending chromatic lines and arpeggiated chords basic skills learned by any student of the guitar.