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19 Inspiring Famous Guitar Player Quotes

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Photo by Sean Rogers
Inspring quotes can unleash your inner motivation or teach you that one valuable life guitar lesson that you always wanted or needed to hear.

It somehow explains the essence of what the person is trying to bring across.

I love quotes from great blues, rock, jazz and classical guitar players or quotes from wise people like Lao Tzu or Buddha.

It makes me want to learn more and realize what is important and what not.

I hope these quotes contribute to your inner motivation and inspire you to study, practice, create, enjoy and achieve something amazing!

Listen and learn from the greatest:

1 – “I dedicated all the time I had to it. The 10 hour workout was just what I put in the magazine at the time, but for me it was every waking moment.” ~ Steve Vai‎

2 – “A lot of people think that if they learn to read music they are gonna lose their feel or their groove or something. It’s the stupidest thing I have ever heard.” ~ Frank Gambale

3 – “I started out playing guitar because Jimi Hendrix was my hero, so my roots were really based on Jimi Hendrix and his style of playing.” ~ Joe Satriani

4 – “I practiced two or three hours, sometimes none, sometimes six. It was very varied.” ~ Julian Bream

5 – “The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.” – B.B. King

6 – ‎”Listening is the key to everything good in music.” – Pat Metheny

7 – “For me, the ultimate form of expression is blues, where jazz appeals to me on an intellectual level.” – Scott Henderson

8 – “If you play music for no other reason than actually just because you love it, the skills just kinda creep up on you.” ~ Nuno Bettencourt.

9 – “You can’t think and play. If you think about what you’re playing the playing becomes stilted. You have to just focus on the music I feel, concenctrate on the music, focus on what you’re playing and let the playing come out. Once you start thinking about doing this or doing that, it’s not good. What you are doing is like a language.

You have a whole collection of musical ideas and thoughts that you’ve accumulated through your musical history plus all the musical history of the whole world and it’s all in your subconscious and you draw upon it when you play” ~ Joe Pass

10 – “you’re always learning about this thing everytime you pick it up” ~ Keith Richards

11 – “When I look for what I’m going to listen to I go backwards. I’m always going the other way you see. Most people are trying to figure out ‘how do I get in the fast lane going that way?’. I’m going in the other direction. I wanna find the oldest thing to do.” ~ Eric Clapton

12 – “I do a lot of the stuff that I started out doing that I think any guitar player that’s concerned about the craft needs to do. It’s basic practicing of the basic elements.

I try to practice like a well rounded regiment of things where I can kind of do whatever I wanna do and I also have to practice the actual songs to keep that under my fingers as well.” ~ John Petrucci

13 – “I came from the last couple of years in a generation where we didn’t have a computer around so we didn’t waste as much time on the internet as we do now so I had large chuncks of time which to devote to doing something.” ~ John Mayer

14 – “Forget about every other lesson in the book. You have to be able to tap your foot or else none of what you doing you are not gonna have any control of your symptom.” ~ Al Di Meola

15 – “Every July, August and part of September I escape of the guitar, I escape of Paco de Lucia and I go to Mexico to the Carrabian. I have a little house there where I spend two months listening to music, no playing because I don’t bring the guitar with me, fishing and cooking my fish and charging the batteries for new concerts.” ~ Paco De Lucia

16 – “I had struggled with alternate picking for a very long time. I never thought I could do it.” ~ Paul Gilbert

17 – “I find that musically, looking back, I have learned much more from those relationships, people I have bumped into that I have admired, that’s the way I feel musically I have learned most in life.” ~ John Williams

18 – “I just play, just you know, If i just sit down with the guitar and just do whatever for, you know, an half an hour or an hour whatever. That’s pretty much, that should do it for me.” ~ Slash

19 – “I want to figure out how I can make the most important statement with the least amount of information, so I don’t run out of ideas by the time I get to my second or third chorus.” ~ Larry Carlton

Let me know what your favorite quote is in the comments.

Thanks for taking the time!
Klaus Crow

 
 
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Comments

  1. Thanks for these useful thoughts.
    The best quote I can offer came from Julian Bream – for me the greatest musician ever to take the guitar as his first instrument.
    I was at his home directing his life story DVD for Music On Earth.
    I asked about practice and he replied;
    “I’m retired now so the practice is down to just 4 hours”

    He had a dedicated shed in the garden where he sat every day and did what needed to be done.
    His recorded legacy is a gift to the world.
    All the best
    Paul Balmer,
    Author ‘The Haynes Guitar Manuals’

  2. Hi Paul,

    That is a really nice quote. :-)

    What a privilege it must have been to be in the presence of such a master.

    Thanks for sharing a beautiful comment.

    Klaus Crow

  3. “One day you pick up the guitar and you feel like a great master, and the next day you feel like a fool. It’s because we’re different every day, but the guitar is always the same…beautiful.” Tommy Emmanuel

    Best quote I have to offer…love it!

  5. I too have an affinity for good quotes. While this one isn’t from a guitar player, it’s relevance should still be apparent.

    “People make a mistake who think that my art has come easily to me. Nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not studied over and over.” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  6. im not so sure if this classifies as a quote, but none the less, it has great relevance to frank gambales quote. Andre Segovia sat in silent astoundment as he watched Django Reindhert improvise on a couple of famous trad jazz tunes, when he finally managed to get words out of his mouth, he asked Django where he could get the sheet music for those mesmerizing tunes he had just played. Django is said to have replied “ive never played from a piece of sheet music in my life, i play from feeling” which astounded mr segovia almost as much as djangos playing had. its a nice story of two grand masters of their own art, whose music will live forever.

  8. I am just starting to learn guitar. I have loved music all of my life and thought, I am never going to learn if I don’t start sometime. My fingers are so sore, I can hardly type. I have heard they will toughen up. I can only imagine playing for hours a day. The quotes let me know what the real “players” do.

  9. My favorite quote comes from a lesser known musician, Phil X. He once said at a guitar clinic (which I was fortunate enough to be at) “It’s not about how long you’ve been playing, it’s about how long you play. Like I’ve been playing for 45 years, but when I was 18 I played more than I have done in the rest of my life.”

  10. HI Nihar,

    So beautifully said. Love that quote. Indeed it’s all about how much time you really invest in your guitar playing and not about how long you’ve got that guitar standing in your guitar stand since you were…..

    Thanks for sharing.
    Klaus

  12. “Each and every song has its end,but dare tell me that this is a good reason not to enjoy the music”
    Unknown

  14. “Whatever you’ve learned becomes truly useful to you only once it has become second nature.”
    ~Guthrie Govan
    “Speed is a by-product of accuracy.”
    ~Guthrie Govan

  15. From a clinic I attended a few years ago by the great Larry Carlton…

    “In jazz improv, there is no such thing as wrong notes, only notes that are better chosen and it’s not about the note you play, it’s about the note you play next.” – Larry Carlton

  18. First of all, I just recently discovered this site – AWESOME! Thanks Klaus!
    Here is a quote I consider a classic, “Sometimes its not what you play, its what you don’t play.”

  19. i play piano.But i like guitar so much.Thank u for such nice and lovely quotes that touch my soul

  20. Hi Alpha,

    You’re welcome. It’s my pleasure.
    I always like searching for great quotes and listen to guitar players and people in general who makes sense of things and contribute with words of wisdom.

    Best regards,
    Klaus Crow

  21. “I dedicated all the time I had to it. The 10 hour workout was just what I put in the magazine at the time, but for me it was every waking moment.” ~ Steve Vai‎

    It’s like …how bad do you want it?…Steve Vai really really wanted it
    and boy does he ever got it!

    I keep my old beat up knock around acoustic that sounds amazing right by my bed…if I get up in the night I have to pick it up and play something before I can go back to sleep… Sometimes I just wake up and reach out and touch it. haha. I LOVE guitar!!!!!

  22. just beginning to play ,if you want to call it that it may sound silly but i like to play say an “e” chord and just listen to it fade away i wonder where it went sound does travel

  23. Hi Mr.Crow I’m from Indonesia .

    I’m feeling inspired . I will go back home now . and write this post again on my site in Bahasa Indonesia . it would be a great motivation for the beginner guitarist like me . I hope you allow me to do that hehehe and I will appriciate it .

    Thank Mr.Crow

  24. The great and beloved Father of the British Blues, Alexis Korner, whom I recorded with, gave me my greatest
    lesson when he said, “You know, it’s just as important what you DON’T play as what what you DO play.”

  25. I’ve been playing guitar since age9 and I’m 58 now. I enjoyed these quotes. I think Joe Pass and Keith Richards quotes ment the most to me. Al Di Meola is my favorite out of the bunch and expected more from him. I can relate to all of them though. I think Paco had a good thing also. If you stay away from guitar a little while it is more refreshing when you pick it up. I started learning by scratching up Chet Atkins albums trying to play them note for note. I think if you get your ear first, learn from listening. Then study books or whatever plus talk to and play with as many guitarists as you can. You’ll learn something from everyone of them. Thanks. Chet Atkins to Ted Nugent to Jeff Beck to Al Di Meola to Jimi Hendrix to John McLaughlin to Robert Johnson to me.

  27. Aw, this was a very nice post. Taking the time and actual effort to produce a good article?
    but what can I say? I put things off a whole lot and don’t manage to get
    nearly anything done.

  28. “Don’t say you can’t do something until you prove to your self that you can’t do it”
    Les Paul

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