Eric Clapton's scales - when he comes off a high note and it's time for a refrain or a little bit of a rest, he peals off scales going downwards that are so good it's unbelievable.
Jazz: Music invented for the torture of imbeciles.
I've been playing electric guitar since I was 11, and I love the blues.
My definition of Blues is that it's a musical form which is very disciplined and structured coupled with a state of mind, and you can have either of those things but it's the two together that make it what it is. And you need to be a student for one, and a human being for the other, but those things alone don't do it.
A lot of people wonder, what is the blues? Well, I'm gonna tell you what the blues is.
I consider myself much more of a blues singer now.
The blues has been the foundation of all other American music since the beginning.
The best slide guitar, unless you're playing the Muddy Waters-style, is the old '52 Goldtop Les Paul.
The blues scale was the first thing I learned. It's just a pentatonic scale with a flat seventh and a few notes that sound cool when you bend them. And because people have amalgamated the blues into this rock-blues scale, if you're using it, you better sound like a real authentic blues player.
The blues is instilled in every musical cell that floats around your body.
Jazz is the music of unemployment.
Play the pentatonic blues scale, just for fret- and pick-hand dexterity and to mesh them both together.
The blues is life itself.
All music is the blues. All of it.
Because the blues is the basis of most American music in the 20th century. It's a 12-bar form that's played by jazz, bluegrass and country musicians. It has a rhythmic vocabulary that's been used by rock n' roll. It's related to spirituals, and even the American fiddle tradition.
I just play blues for fun.
I have a thing for major 7ths. They've got a very mournful, nostalgic quality to them.
I still like to play the blues more than anything else.
Yes, there's a lot of the blues in my playing.
I tend to play a lot of blues things at home, because most blues things are basically within a 12-bar pattern.
If you're going to get into music, you've got to learn the 12-bar blues.
There's a difference between the blues of the New Orleans guys and anyone else and the difference is in a chord, but I can't figure the name of it. It's a different chord, and they all make it.
When I picked up my guitar, I spent the first day learning the chord E, the second day A, then B7, and all of a sudden, I could play the blues.
