Best Guitar Playing Quotes

"When it comes to soloing, this is a CAGED playbook for the arpeggios."

"Learning to play guitar is one of the best decisions I ever made."

"There's something about firing up tubes and transformers and pushing a lot of air through a cabinet that gets me excited as a guitar player."

"You want to keep your hands close to the fretboard... that's control."

"E shape connects to the D shape so then I hope you went to this shape and located these two roots on our fourth string and second string. Great job!"

"The greatest guitar sounds on records have no premeditation to them at all."

"A pull off is not just releasing that finger—you've got to pinch that string."

"No one influenced more people to play the guitar than I think Eddie Van Halen."

"His style of playing was not just so unique but it was transferable, it was applicable to whatever style of music you were listening to."

"Just love your guitar and play. Believe and you will get better."

"You can get so much more emotion out of those chords if you learn to play them in different spots."

"Immediately recognizable tone, amazing songwriter and riff writer, technical ability off the charts."

"Strumming without a pick opens up a world of possibilities."

"Find the way that works best for you in strumming."

"There's not one right way to fingerstyle—find your own path."

"Jimmy's guitars just take it to a completely new place."

"My hairline has been comfortable with the chords and the half pick."

"There's never been a better time to be a guitar player."

"It's very liberating to play because you have all this room to strum."

"[...] she made it her career last by being a guitarist for other big acts including divas las vegas where she played guitar for celine dion and anastasia."

"I learned guitar when I was eight years old. I got straight A's and I got a guitar."

"I like to play baritones because I do a lot of drop tuning, really sharp and drop B."

"Definitely one of the best guitar players that have ever walked this Earth."

"So, in my mind, playing music with a Gibson through a Marshall full stack is more like being a blacksmith using a sledgehammer."

"Muting strings with your thumb is extremely important. You want to always be muting strings you're not playing."

"Kuda's playing continues to have an enormous influence on guitarists all over the world."

"Moving up the neck chords opens up new musical possibilities with chords you already know."

"It's an interesting sensation playing on bar frets."

"So if you're playing the big sustained note rock solo then a great big long delay can be a truly wonderful thing."

"Master of Puppets is a thrash metal masterpiece, a benchmark for young guitarists playing their trade in garages and rehearsal spaces around the world."

"Just like the joy of the double hammer and how it makes you sound like you're super fast even if you're not."

"I think it's really important to just enjoy playing the guitar."

"A delightful chord progression, a wonderful riff for beginners to learn."

"It's just one the most satisfying guitars I've ever played."

"I've been brushing up on my guitar skills and I've been learning some like picking patterns."

"Your best place to cultivate a sense of guitar awareness to become a guitar player of my level."

"Using a capo creatively to play the same chords."

"It's the album that grabbed me and convinced me that all I ever wanted to do was play guitar."

"Rock and roll forever, dudes! My epic guitar awaits!"

"So I'll take these power chords and instead of just, you know, hitting them once, I'm actually just going to palm mute them and I'm also going to syncopate the chord changes."

"This fits right in with that category of like iconic awesome rock riffs but that are easy to play."

"If you play the guitar, you definitely punch above your weight compared to non-guitar players."

"I'm a woodworker but I'm also a self-taught guitar player and I taught myself mainly by trying to emulate this guy James Hetfield the lead singer of Metallica."

"Demonstrates everything that I love about rock and roll and Honky Tonk and Country guitar playing."

"What gets me going is to see another guitar player just go ape [__]. That's what gets me going."

"Simon lazat trying to compete for another Gibson custom guitar which is the trophy this week."

"One thing I found for getting these on guitar is to try to get the melody on one string as much as possible."

"That's what you're doing when you're playing a guitar into a an amp that snaps and responds."

"A fun guitar and that's what guitar should be, playing should be fun."

"As we get older our bodies don't always perform the way that we want them to but that doesn't mean we have to quit playing the guitar we just have to be smart about it and adjust accordingly so don't give up on your dreams of playing the guitar."

"Jimmy Page, you know, he's one of the architects of the whole idea of rock and roll guitar playing."

"It's been four minutes exactly of me running my mouth with zero guitar playing."

"This is a fun guitar to play. I'm having a great time in the short time I've been filming this, here about an hour and 20 minutes."

"Straight from the start, this is that sort of signature Dave Mustang bluesy style of riffing."

"It's uh these tendons right yeah so the so the connector the tendons are sometimes called leaders and they would go clear up into the forearm to make the action of flexing the tip of the finger."

"Hendrix revolutionized most elements of guitar playing in his quest to expand the limits of rock."

"The blazing speed of the pop tarts lick boiled down to the genius of Yngwie's single-string playing, which could be connected together like train cars in any order, and still remain perfectly synchronized thanks to chunking."

"It's going to be way easier on your fingers."

"Good muting technique is one of the biggest reasons that your favorite guitar players sound so damn clean and good whenever they play."

"Your index finger is the biggest tool that you're going to use to eliminate any remaining noise in your playing by using a technique I call the soft capo."

"You stop thinking like a guitar player, which is, and I think that's the key, right? Yeah."

"The most important thing is you pick up a guitar and play and you feel inspired to play."

"90% of playing guitar is rhythm guitar."

"I just get to play the guitar, stand in the dark, and it's a gas."

"This is a fabulous guitar, absolutely loves it. A little tip from him, Richard is mate, don't start with the volume fully up."

"Great guitar playing from Tai Tabal on here, he's a really special player."

"Alternate picking freedom: freedom to alternate pick any series of notes crossing any string that you want."

"I especially love when playing slap to literally slap the guitar like that. I do that a lot when I end like, if I'm playing slap and if I'm in E, I'll just mute all the strings and there's no like reason to do it other than it's just fun."

"It's a great time to be a guitar player."

"So I wanted the same sound with the fingernails and the pick so when the pick hits the string you hear that sound that pop, yeah, right, so when I tried my real nails I wasn't getting that."

"So a lot of guitar players from the early days, you know, Albert Lee and Brent and guys like that, well press-ons don't work because I know Brent still uses press-ons mm-hm."

"You're just raking across the strings, and then I landed on the fifth fret, fifth string with my index finger."

"Hot damn, Roy Buchanan could play the guitar."

"He knows how to write a song, he knows how to play the guitar."

"It's a great time to be a guitar player because these things sound so unbelievably good."

"I love to play guitar because it does inspire me to write and to do things."

"I learned how to play guitar from going and watching them play."

"Being able to change chords in time and strum smoothly, it's one of the cornerstones of playing guitar."

"Gradually over the years, I realized that its unique character was a plus. Along with probably the unique way that I play because of that. I mean, every guitarist is unique, really."

"I play guitar these days when somebody hires me to play a solo."

"He's not doing that in order to be a flash guitarist, he's expressing an idea that that technique allowed him to express."

"Enjoy your guys's rest of the weekend, play some guitar."

"Wide frets have more mass under the string and they definitely feel different."

"The chords that exist inside of a key can be played across the fretboard using those five shapes."

"What a lot of more experienced guitar players will do is, where appropriate, they will play a much smaller shape that better serves the music."

"Let's write music and bridge the gap between music theory on paper and actually making stuff with your guitar."

"I made some mistakes on the guitar, so then I redid the pattern."

"Recording yourself playing guitar is, in my opinion, one of the most powerful tools that you can use to accelerate your guitar progress."

"You don't play the guitar for anybody else; you play the guitar for you."

"Probably one of the most popular guitar songs ever, and for good reason as well."

"As long as you're happy with the way your guitar plays and it sounds okay, leave it well alone."

"I find if you make the guitar almost impossible to play, then you're going to be forced to play something meaningful."

"The chop chord is a chord that you can turn off with your left hand; you can turn it on with the strum and then you can stop it with that hand."

"I started playing guitar when I was about 10 or 11."

"What you're hearing is the wood, and the fingers, and the pickups."

"James Burton defined what the Telecaster style of guitar playing is."

"The idea of a perfect string gauge for me is something that I can pick on the top three strings and not go out of tune and still something that's relatively easy to solo on on the bottom strings."

"There's a reason that I play guitar and I'm here with you today."

"I have not met one guitarist that has not been inspired by him."

"Songs give you something to play when somebody asks you, 'Hey, do you play guitar?'"

"It is this kind of infusion of energy into the music, at least that's what guitarists are trying to do."

"The scale has a very memorable visual appearance on the fretboard and it's really easy to play."

"Don't get bogged down in the scale names, learn them if that's your thing, but it's more about how can I have something to say on the guitar."

"What makes an intermediate guitar player is not just the skills under their belt, but the concepts they understand."

"Every time Eddie touched the strings, he got a harmonic bloom that comes off the string."

"Pinch harmonics just scream out of this thing."

"Roy is just such a great player, full stop."

"If you feel like you're not good at guitar and you think it's because your hands are too small, I want you to just get rid of that idea right now."

"I've been playing guitar with these small little babies for 15 years now, so if I can do it, you can definitely do it too."

"The choices he made, the way that he built chords, the way that he embellished chords, just nobody had ever done that before."

"If he's playing on a song, you know it's him."

"Eddie Van Halen is the reason I started playing guitar in the first place."

"Once you can understand these and apply these to some basic chord shapes, you can start using them in your own playing."

"Instead of playing three, I'm always playing the half step back from three into three every time."

"Learning to play guitar won't achieve either of these goals, but it will be fun."

"I hope it's inspired some of you to get into your arpeggio playing."

"It's the epitome of guitar coolness."

"It can really help to enhance your tracks and your guitar playing, make your overall playing a more enjoyable for you and for others to listen to."

"This show is packed full of inspiration and fun, designed to help you get more progress, fulfillment, and joy from your acoustic guitar journey."

"If people like the way I play and they like my guitar, I want them to be able to afford it."

"Open tunings are very easy and a lot of times it makes guitar playing in general much easier to play."

"It is just a wonderful vehicle to get started playing guitar solos and more importantly, improvising which means making it up on the spot."

"Really cool lick, I love that, and I just sort of made that one up."

"It's a very visual walkthrough of some of the tone secrets that I use on a regular basis to get great tone every week."

"Remember when you're playing these kind of songs just have fun doing it because that's what playing the guitar should be all about."

"Learning to play guitar riffs from songs you love is absolutely one of the best ways to learn how to play guitar."

"The 12th fret inlay... that's where notes start to repeat themselves."

"Don't just stay in one place; move all up and down the fretboard with these different exercises."

"Don't let the bar chords discourage you, okay? Don't let them discourage you."

"Basic fingerpicking patterns that everybody uses can become the foundation to more advanced patterns."

"It's all about the feel, and that is what really guitar playing is all about."

"Really cool little embellishment or a little lick that you're playing off of your C7."

"All my life I've made a living playing the guitar. It's more than a job; it's way more than a job."

"If you're serious about guitar playing, you really need to understand that relationship, and I think it's critical for you to own at least one tube amp."

"The tubes actually will react to how hard or soft you are playing your guitar."

"The zero fret is comfortable and smooth, and the frets are silky smooth; they basically play themselves."

"There's never been a better time to be a guitar player from a gear perspective, from a music perspective, a technology perspective."

"This is, in a lot of ways, the Golden Age of guitar playing."

"One of the most important aspects of playing the guitar and being a great guitar player is your ability to play rhythm."

"I love the minor pentatonic scale; always sounds nice."

"These five notes work over all those chords, and it's a super fun scale, the pentatonic scale."

"It's psychology really more than practical guitar playing, but it's super duper effective."

"The minute you decide to pick up a Guitar, it should only be because of love and the joy of actually playing."

"He could make those guitars scream and he just was really good at using fuzz and he was a great wah-wah player as well."

"I loved flatpicking it, I loved fingerpicking it."

"It's part of what makes guitar great, which is like, you get to, the world's your oyster so to speak. You can experiment and find things and sort of find your sound and find what works for you."

"It's more than a lifetime's work when you're a guitar player."

"I use some form of palm muting in basically every single thing that I ever play."

"Andy Summers created tones with his guitar chords that strengthened and sustained choruses."

"The notes that came out of his guitar did not sound like he was playing them because his fingers moved on the fretboard so effortlessly."

"You can play anything on any guitar; there are literally no limits out there."

"I always talk about this to guitar players: don't have a long cable if you can help it."

"It's a guitar now that I will play alongside my others, and I think it looks cool."

"It's a really cool little way of playing."

"The best guitar is one that inspires you to pick it up and play it and enjoy the instrument."

"Bend away... he's taking just a single note and turning it into something extremely interesting."

"My approach to just guitar in general is, what serves the song right."

"We're going to learn how to play a very slow and easy to play melodic sounding lead that's really not using any scales at all."

"The flat top really allows you to get tight, crisp, clean bends every time."

"This is like unlocking the entire fretboard."

"The blues is one of the most expressive styles of music out there, and it is essential learning for any guitar player."

"Far out, you are an incredible guitar player."

"Playing on a single string helps to eliminate paralysis fear of movement and acrophobia fear of higher frets."

"I think as a guitar player, you have to evolve at some point."

"It's really good fun, chock full of great rockabilly and rock-and-roll licks and vocabulary."

"Enjoy the pleasant sensation of playing a G chord on a really great acoustic guitar."

"So one of the reasons that the B string's tuned down is to allow the physicality of the instrument to be a little bit easier to manipulate."

"Adding just a little bit of delay can actually enhance the sound of the guitar a lot."

"Sometimes I just want to pick up my guitar and quickly learn some fun riffs."

"The trooper is definitely a classic and super fun to play."

"It all starts with the fingers; you need to be able to just play the guitar."

"This chord is a C sus4, and you need to know your sus chords."

"He'd played electric guitar in high school and found an affinity for the acoustic while in the army."

"Find a guitar that feels good in your hands... that's your initial connection to the instrument."

"When I'm creating music, I'm first and foremost a guitarist."

"It's all about your playing, and you know, screw pedals, like you just want to plug a guitar into the amp and let your fingers do the talking."

"The crucial golden rule of this style of strumming is this arm, this hand, just needs to be a pendulum, an eternal pendulum of constant motion."

"We're not rigidly fixed to an ascending and descending pattern; we're simply moving through the positions in a relaxed manner using a variety of these doorways."

"It's really like two guitars, two separate instruments, and it's this kind of interplay between kind of a question and answer type approach to playing."

"Most of the sound and the character of the guitar is really in the fingers of the player."

"You start playing guitar because you want to play a specific song."

"That makes them great for beginners and professionals alike, no matter what stage you're at in your guitar journey."

"My dream was to be a jazz guitar player."

"If you shift everything up, it's going to sound bluesy; if you shift everything down three frets, it's going to sound happy."

"Everybody has an opportunity to get their hands around the neck of a guitar and play some cool Van Halen regardless of your skill level."

"As a lead guitar slash rhythm guitar player all-in-one one-man show, I feel like I kind of need that EVH kind of vibe, like rhythm slash lead at the same time."

"Playing with your fingers has a very round and natural and full sound to it."

"Feel free to strum everything, even that big E string."

"Develop the most important thing you can develop as a guitarist: your own style of playing guitar solos."

"It's been played by literally every guitarist in the world."

"This really simple way to be able to take any chord that you can play and find easily many other places to play that exact same chord."

"The fingers get looser, the muscle memory gets better, people sort of go, 'You know, you want to play a certain chord or a certain thing,' and it just stuff gets easier to just... your fingers are obviously getting more used to just following commands from the brain."

"Just bridge pickup, plenty of overdrive, plenty of volume, a little bit of slapback, happy days."

"Once you have those five shapes and those five positions under your fingers, that's it, you are literally 80% of learning the entire guitar neck in any key."

"So much of guitar sound is in your fingers."

"You could literally play a 12 Bar Blues just with this little double stop."

"George Lynch's one of my favorite players, so it's always really fun to kind of dive into his solos."

"I used to think I would have to learn really difficult riffs in order to be respected as a guitar player in the guitar world, but that's not true. You can be just as impressive on guitar with strumming as somebody can with doing lead guitar work on the neck and everything."

"It seems to make finding flowing melodies and licks very, very easy."

"We're moving this way or this way on the fretboard rather than being locked in position."