John Sebastian Quotes

I'm not that fluid when it comes to scales and modes. I just pick up the guitar and play. It's all about exploration: just tune the guitar any way you want and start playing.

I'm very interested, for instance, in music in education - getting young people not only to listen to, but participate in the music that I write. I consider this one of the most vital aspects of my work.

In the autumn of 1970 I had a job singing in the school system, playing my guitar in classrooms.

There happened to be guitar classes at the college, and there was a guitar teacher there with whom I used to play. In addition, I also would go out into country schools and teach little kids basic guitar and singing a few times a week.

The Silverlake Conservatory is a nonprofit music school in Los Angeles where we teach music, mostly to kids, but to people of all ages - people who are old, people with beards, all kinds of people.

I'd like to expand on doing what I love and venture out a bit more. I would like to play consistantly good music. Eventually someday I would like to open up a school and teach kids about music.

I've only ever had one doubt about music. It came when I was 11. I hated playing scales.

I'd like to teach kids how to write songs. This will be my first year so I'm just as green as some of the rest of the folks. It's like a music camp and I get to hang out with some of the past contestants.

I don't know anything about music theory at all. Zero. But I don't really need to.

I would like to teach music. It's weird the way they teach music in schools like Julliard these days.

Then I started checking out blues albums from the library and playing the harp along with them.

When I was 17, I taught music; I had 65 students a week, and I did that for a year. So that's pretty regular. But it was great to give the gift of music to people, seeing them learn. It's great to influence young people in a creative way.

I'm a band leader and substitute teacher, and then one day they bring me into a music class, and I'm like, 'Wait a minute, I know this stuff.' And the principal is like, 'Just throw the video in and call it a day,' and I'm like, 'That's not good enough. I want these kids to know what it's like to have a gig and all that kind of stuff.'

When I was six years old, Mom and Dad gave me a guitar for my birthday, and Daddy taught me the chords to 'You Are My Sunshine.'

We really wanted to circumvent that online learning curve, where it's virtually impossible to use words to explain music.

I think there's a fallacy that's been concocted by the music teachers' profession, to wit: that there's a certain sequence of events necessary in order to have the revealed truth about the way one produces a given effect on a given instrument.

Why English music is being taught in some schools? The government should make arrangements to promote Indian classical music among students.

My high school teacher, Reggie Andrews, was a huge factor in my learning my instrument. He didn't play bass, but it was the part where he gave me a knowledgeable perspective of what it was that I was doing.

I taught guitar lessons for a long time for a living before I got on the road. I really enjoyed hanging out with kids, talking about music with them, and trying to influence them in a positive way.

My mother, who is a Carnatic musician, started a school for children when I was around three, and I grew up listening to her teaching students.

The electric guitar was a big step for me, but I didn't spend a lot of time trying to adjust. It wasn't like, 'Hey, little lady, come strap on this here big guitar.' We took it in steps as much as possible.

I was doing a lot of teaching on my online guitar school and I started to use vocal melodies as a way of teaching my students. To be able to do that, I had to learn them myself.

I think I've been playing bass for as long as I've played guitar, and I love them both.

My brother is a musician and I'm in tennis.

My grandfather is a musician, my son is a musician and a singer. My mother played the piano too.