M. Ward Quotes

I was 16 when I started playing. I borrowed a friend's acoustic guitar, and I had a Beatles chord book. I just taught myself that way.

I can't remember the first song I learned to play on bass, but the first song I learned to play on guitar was 'For Your Love' by the Yardbirds. That kind of was the beginning for me. I thought it was a great song and I loved the open chord progression at the beginning of that song.

I do remember actually learning chords to Beatles songs. I thought they were great songwriters.

It was the early days of Rock 'n' Roll in this country. We were all struggling to learn music, it might be Country, Jazz, Classical, Blues or even Rock 'n' Roll.

I like guitar. It just turned out that it's the instrument I learned to play. I have a lot of respect for it, and I'm learning more and more every day. For me, the classic band setup - guitars, drums, bass - will stay fresh forever. I don't know. I'm still into it.

I got a guitar when I was about 14, for a Christmas present, and went from there.

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.

I haven't learned anything new on guitar since high school. And I think it's time to learn something.

But when I was a teenager, I was in my room learning how to play bass by listening to Rush and the Sex Pistols. I wasn't reading Karl Marx.

When I was 12 or 13, my dad taught me a couple of different chords, and once I learned chords, I never learned to read music, but I learned tablature, like a lot of kids do, and I learned songs that had the chords I knew. It took me a long time to understand the upstroke of picking and strumming, but once I did, it all fell into place.

About ten years ago, I knew three chords on the guitar. Now, in 1982, I know three chords on the guitar.

My dad started teaching me how to play guitar when I was 13 years old. When he'd go to work, he'd map out guitar cords on a piece of notebook paper. I'd sit down and look at it every day and practice while he was gone.

I bad a piano long before I bad a guitar, and the practice I got just playing those three chords in a basic 12-bar blues song was very important.

No matter how long you play the guitar, there's always something else to learn.

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.

I just started off on my own by learning the regular chords then the barre chords. Then I'd lean the notes that would go with them.

I was enamored with music at a very young age. Everything started with kundiman, then evolved to Carpenters, Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow, and eventually classic rock music.

I've been doing music in some form since I was seven years old.

My dad was a musician, played on the road and played all of his life. And I grew up in a musical family. I heard it all. I mean, I got accustomed to listening to Roy Acuff and all the old guys. It was really cool for me growing up in a family like that.

I've always listened to a wide variety of music, and I know that shows through my songwriting evolution.

I started out with acoustic guitar and loop pedal because I thought I wanted to be Ed Sheeran.

I know how to read music, watching my mom and listening to Mom play music.

For me to have the opportunity to learn the darbuka and the tabla in Dubai, it created my own thoughts for music.

First, I started to play the organ. I did that until I was 11. From the age of 11 to 13, I gave up music entirely. And then at 13, I picked up the guitar, and after one and a half years, I started practicing intensively. I began playing in rock bands, and it was there that I discovered that the music I liked to write was always instrumental.

When you hear composer, you think, like, Beethoven: guy in a powdered wig, at a piano, furiously scribbling on manuscript paper. That's not the only image that a composer should bring up, you know. But that's kind of what we've said it is.