Instrument Mastery Quotes

The advice I am giving always to all my students is above all to study the music profoundly... music is like the ocean, and the instruments are little or bigger islands, very beautiful for the flowers and trees.

The guitar is my favorite and the one, I guess, I'm best at. But I play enough of the different instruments to be able to write with them and to, hopefully, to make myself look impressive on stage.

I think my best advice for young guitar players is that it's not an easy road - definitely not; female guitar player or male guitar player, it's not an easy road at all.

I made the tenor sax - there's nobody plays like me and I don't play like anybody else.

I'm not likely to forget where I've been and what I've done and learned. I think it's just as important to play new instruments as to play new pieces. The old ones are getting scarcer and the new ones more and more wonderful.

Certainly being proficient in an instrument does have its problems. Because the better you get, the more you just start sounding like an ordinary guitarist. There are certainly guitarists that transcend that and do really find their sound and all that sort of stuff.

After I learned the piano, I went on to learn percussion, the tuba, b-flat baritone, French horn, trombone, trumpet, most of the instruments in the orchestra. Trumpet was my instrument.

I play, like, 12 instruments. Guitar, piano, harmonica, African drums... I'm working on mastering the accordion.

The guitar is the easiest instrument to play and the hardest to play well.

I practice more than ever ... mostly scales and arpeggios ... and anything I can't do.

Most people are fascinated to see someone play an instrument in an inspired way. We are moved by witnessing musical brilliance, and it was this notion that led me to purchase the GuitarTV domain 10 years ago.

In so many ways, it feels the same now when I play as the very first time I picked up the instrument. There's always this sound out there that's just a little bit beyond my reach and I'm trying to get there and that just sort of keeps me going.

There are times, like with Dire Straits, where you can get as close as you can be to being good at your instrument and not cross over to that tasteless place.

Guitars are like women. You'll never get them totally right.

You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

You have a natural groove inside of you, but the more you practise, the more comfortable you will be with your instrument.

People are more used to seeing men who are masters at an instrument than women.

I always liked the steel guitar. I also love the guys that play the bottleneck. But I could never do it; I never made it do what I want. So every time I would pick up the guitar, I'd shake my hand and trill it a bit. For some strange reason my ears would say to me that sounds similar to what those guys were doing. I can't pick up the guitar now without doing it. So that's how I got into making my sound. It was nothing pretty. Just trying to please myself. I heard that sound.

The piano is where everything starts and ends. Everything is based off of it. If you understand that, you wind up understanding a lot more in all other instruments. For me, it had always been something important to try and learn.

I feel like I'm just learning how to play the guitar. I mean, really learning to play the guitar.

A computer is like a violin. You can imagine a novice trying first a phonograph and then a violin. The latter, he says, sounds terrible. That is the argument we have heard from our humanists and most of our computer scientists. Computer programs are good, they say, for particular purposes, but they aren’t flexible. Neither is a violin, or a typewriter, until you learn how to use it.

There are only so many letters in the alphabet. When I talk to young musicians or authors and they ask for advice, I say, 'You gotta learn all the letters of your own personal alphabet. With music, you need to know all the different kinds of music and everything in and around your given instrument.'

The Ramones were inspiring a lot of bands that couldn't master their instruments.

I can't play an instrument to save my life. But when I'm creating, and when I'm making music, I feel like I'm the head of the orchestra, and I'm just waving my wand, and something is created.

I'll tell you one thing: I will always play the sh** out of my guitar.