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.
My dad had a guitar that he gave me. I went to Walmart and bought a chord chart and hung it up in my room, and I was just trying to figure out how to play the guitar and put words with what I was learning.
I've never been much of a guitarist. I mean, I've played forever, but I was always more of a rhythm kind of guy. I don't read music.
I played the Spanish guitar for eight years, like flamenco.
These days I can really get the strings to snap if I want.
I started playing the guitar and singing at about 11 or 12.
All my songs were made at the end of the neck, 'farmer's corner' chords.
When you watch your favorite guitarists play, notice how little their hands and fingers move sometimes. The economy of motion can't be overemphasized.
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.
In the last couple of years I've been picking up my guitar again.
What happens is people go, 'I want to play the guitar,' and the first thing they do is hit Google: 'How can I play this?' and the next thing you know, you've learned all these tricks, but you've never learned how to play rhythm guitar with a groove.
I'm enjoying doing research, to get better at the guitar, to get better at rhyming. That's an essential skill.
Guitar playing is both extremely easy for me and extremely difficult for me at the same time.
I bought one of those Learn How to Play Guitar Chords By Yourself and it shows you the diagram where to put your hands and I took that in my room, sat with my singles and learned how to play guitar.
The only instrument I play myself is the ukulele.
My guitar-playing always included bass lines, melody lines, and rhythm-guitar grooves.
I started writing songs when I started learning guitar.
When I first started writing songs, I did play with my fingers, and I had these kind of weird strums. There's, like, three or four strumming patterns that seemed kind of unique to me.
The ultimate guitar players can play every scale in the book.
When I got my first guitar, I played along with everything I heard that had guitar in it, like the Ramones, Nirvana and Sublime, as well as whatever hip-hop and R&B stuff was on the radio.
If you play acoustic guitar you're the depressed, sensitive guy.
I took one guitar lesson, and they wanted me to play 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' or 'Michael Row the Boat Ashore,' and that was the last guitar lesson that I ever took, so I taught myself what I wanted to know.
When I picked up guitar, it wasn't like, 'OK, I'm going to be Kenny Chesney.' It was like, 'I want to play a chord,' and then it was like, 'I want to play another one, then play a song, then sing while playing the song.'
I feel like I'm just learning how to play the guitar. I mean, really learning to play the guitar.
I started playing guitar because of instrumental guitar music.
