Paul Gilbert Quotes

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 noticed a lot of guitar players neglected the rhythm part of rhythm guitar and decided I would try to focus in that. As my skill and knowledge of the instrument grew, I found lead started to come naturally. Sometimes I play guitar like a frustrated drummer. Ha ha!

I always thought of myself as more of a rhythm player than a big soloist.

After playing now for 60 years, it's still very challenging for me to play a simple melody and have it clean and touch the reed at the proper time in the proper way.

My guitar-playing always included bass lines, melody lines, and rhythm-guitar grooves.

I don't really play a lot of slide in general, but it was fun getting into that style and exploring it.

It's so satisfying as a guitar player to play stuff that's related to the blues.

As a guitar player, playing instrumental music is a blast.

The way Will Moore taught me, and the way I play it, the blues is just something different.

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

I love to play guitar. I've been writing my own songs on the axe since I was nine years old. I suck at leads.

I started playing guitar back in '56. I was a teenager, and guitars had just come in, and I had a thing for it and got one. Started learning lead breaks from songs, because that was the easiest thing to do at the time. I had the guitar for two years before I learned any chords. Really.

The first time I learned how to play, my guitar was out of tune. I didn't know it; I just started writing songs.

I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist.

I've always thought that the act of playing the guitar was the act of trying to make a point of playing the guitar.

When I was 12, I wanted to learn how to play the guitar, and I found a chord book in a shop, and I stuffed it down my trousers. And that's how I learned to play the guitar.

Guitar playing is both extremely easy for me and extremely difficult for me at the same time.

I've always loved the guitar. You see Jimi Hendrix playing the guitar with his teeth, and OK, you know you're never going to be able to do that, but I always wanted to play an instrument of some sort.

I enjoy playing the band as the band. I 'be' the whole band and I'm playing the drums, I'm playing the guitar, I'm playing the saxophone. To me, the most wonderful thing about playing music is that.

For me, the best rock is not what you play - it's what you're not playing.

In the last couple of years I've been picking up my guitar again.

Initially, I just used the guitar as a prop. I'd pose with it in front of a mirror in my Kiss makeup when I was skipping school. Then I figured out how to play the main riff to Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water' on just the E string. Next, my old man showed me how to play barre chords, and that's when things started getting really heavy.

I've started to look at guitar playing from more than just a standpoint of using certain modes and techniques.

I was put through piano lessons when I was a kid. I say 'put through' because it was fun and I loved it, and it's been beneficial now, but it was difficult because, although I can read music, I much prefer just playing and improvising and at least finding my own way to play an instrument.

It's amazing how a lot of the metal guys have never strummed! And it's not that challenging, but it really opens up a lot of doors in ways they might not have imagined.