Ritchie Blackmore Quotes

Experimenting with different sounds is great, but when it comes down to it, you're still playing a guitar.

Well mostly in song writing my experience is that there isn't so much inspiration as hard work. You sit there for hours, days and weeks with a guitar and piano until something good comes.

I just go into the studio, look at the lyrics for the first time when I put them on the piano, and go. If I haven't got it within 40 minutes, I give up. It's never changed, the thrill has never gone, because I don't know what I'm going to get next.

I love country music, blues, and punk, and one day I might make those kinds of records.

The Chili Peppers do a lot of improvising, but it's within the framework of song structures. The Meatbats is from a purely instrumental standpoint. But when you hear the term 'instrumental music' you think it's real serious stuff and everybody's playing a million notes and it's about playing fast. That's not what we do.

I really believe that we're a studio-based band, and I have always thought that.

I'm interested in directing attention and focus, explored through playing cello.

My vocation is more in composition really than anything else - building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army.

When you're making music, it's meant to be shared with people. Sometimes, even if I'm writing a song, someone else brings a vibe. There's something different about it. If someone can play a better bassline than me, I'll let them do it. I'm just here to fit in and see where it goes.

That's the beauty of music. You can take a theme from a Bach sacred chorale and improvise. It doesn't make any difference where the theme comes from; the treatment of it can be jazz.

Tunings are wonderfully inspiring, and it helps you to write music. If I'm stuck, you know, I change the tuning.

I've been really trying to hone the art of songwriting in a way that doesn't follow any sort of guideline.

My parents were worried about me, certainly when I became so deeply interested in music and people like the New York Dolls who, at the time, were very peculiar indeed.

I wrote music. I was in a hardcore band when I was 14, and I wasn't good enough to play anyone else's songs, so I had to write my own.

I didn't grow up listening to country music. I pretty much grew up rebelling against country music.

If I get an idea for a song, I have a melody for it. I'm a musician first. I'm not limited by the fretboard.

One of my biggest thrills for me still is sitting down with a guitar or a piano and just out of nowhere trying to make a song happen.

When I write a song and come up with an arrangement and a vocal part, it's always a challenge trying to find a singer who can interpret it sort of the way that I hear it, and it's a very difficult thing to do. I mean, singing is like playing an instrument - everybody does it a little bit different - singing maybe even more so.

I'd experimented with so many different types of music. I had these folky songs I'd written and recorded, but something wasn't quite right.

I usually have an idea of how I want a song to sound, but I don't always know how to get there.

When we were making Speaking in Tongues and Remain in Light, we were jamming. From that we were taking the best bits and then recording and improvising on top of those.

I was the product of very young parents, and they had wild ways. My mother was in a punk band. Rebelling would have been learning to play piano.

We had a bunch of instruments around the house. Like, I played different instruments, trumpet, bass, drums, piano, all that, but whatever I could get my hands on.

Cage always wanted to know what my structure was, if I had one. I often did have some sense of the time structure. Then he'd make a different one for the music.

I play guitar all the time, and I'm constantly thinking of songs... Every time I pick up a guitar, I come up with different riffs, all different bands I've been in. Sometimes there is a song or riff that could only belong with Slipknot, and I just can't use it for anything else, regardless of whatever happened.