Jose Feliciano Quotes

I knew absolutely nothing about recording. I had this four-track recorder, and I'd plug my electric guitar right into it, which sounded real bad. I moved any fader that made a drastic change in sound. I thought that was cool - that it was communicating something. I didn't have the skills to do anything subtle. It was just like screaming.

The development of new instrumental and vocal idioms has been one of the remarkable phenomena of recent music.

I don't think there's any music that you hear on the radio today that would be possible without Jimi Hendrix. Rock, blues-rock, heavy metal, any guitar stuff when you get right down to it - Jimi did it. He's certainly the guy who basically invented the blues-rock genre for guitar players.

The modern recording studio, with its well-trained engineers, 24-track machines and shiny new recording consoles, encourages the artist to get involved with sound. And there have always been artists who could make the equipment serve their needs in a highly personal way - I would single out the Beatles, Phil Spector, the Beach Boys and Thom Bell.

... you watch Jimi Hendrix literally reinvent the instrument. He was playing from somewhere else. He was really a kind of hybrid, and I can't even begin to imagine where he came from

Kendrick Lamar is a great, great thinker. He's a tremendous artist.

I know it is one of the most important instruments and inventions, the electric guitar, to me, since television or movies or anything like that.

What you have to understand is that blues... it's in a line from the oldest forms of African music. If you're playing it like it's an echo of the past, it would be a lot less exciting, but this music lives today.

When you limit the word 'jazz' to one period of history, for the people who love that period, then maybe it can be dead because nobody plays like that anymore. But jazz is progressive music; it always has to progress, and musicians always have to find new landscapes and new ways to speak out, so of course it's always changing.

Did you know that da Vinci was a painter, polymath, engineer, architect, biologist, and writer all rolled into one? He drew sketches of helicopters at a time when they weren't even invented!

I feel some allegiance to pushing electric-guitar music into a different realm, somewhere that isn't retrospective. There's a lot of guitar bands that are a tribute to the 1970s or the Nineties. I want to experiment with guitar music more.

And I'm interested in writing music that takes risks. My point is that maybe the term EDM is pinned on me and my buddies, but maybe it'll be less so if I experiment.

As far as pedals are concerned, the test for me is if I step on it, do I seem to be playing better?

I write on the acoustic guitar, I write some on the piano, but I've been messing around with these guitar pedals and drum machines, educating myself in that world.

Paul Cummins is a genius. He's a true visionary.

I use Bogner amps and custom-designed Schecter guitars with Seymour Duncan Invader pickups. I beef up my tone with a Boss CS- 3 Compression Sustainer. It's kinda like my secret weapon.

You know, rock n' roll's an old carcass: it's one big cliche. It's so difficult to do anything that has any sense of freshness or vitality or meaning. But that's what I'm trying to do, to give it new meaning.

How do we make a record that's true to the vibe of the band but still maintain the pace of moving forward and doing something fresh?

In music, I wanted to make sure I was innovating.

Most of everything I've ever written actually was written on acoustic. 'Do You Feel' was written on electric. 'I'm in You' was written on piano.

I like that people are still trying to guess what kind of music I'm making.

I found that the flute was too limiting. Soon I bought a microphone, then loudspeakers, then an echo, then a synthesiser. Much later I threw the flute away; it was a sort of process.

Jimi Hendrix is one of the main influences on why I wanted to play guitar. He really shook me. I think it was his whole style - the look and what he did with the guitar.

Piano feels soft. Violins and all different string instruments feel soft. Guitar, even electric guitar before you start adding distortion, that you can play soft.

If you look at these bands like The Beatles, they did something that was new for that time, whether it was shocking or just a new direction that they were going.