Fingerstyle Guitar Quotes

The guitar is the easiest instrument to play and the hardest to play well.

When I was 15, I became an avid fan of Andres Segovia. He brought so much respectability to the guitar.

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.

I'm not like other guitar players. In fact, I'm not even like most acoustic players because I use the nylon-string acoustic. I do play steel-string and the electric guitar, too, because I love rock 'n' roll and guitarists like Jimi Hendrix. But my bread and butter has always been the nylon-string.

Guitar is the most expressive instrument in the world. I don't play much any more. Maybe a bit in private.

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.

I started playing the acoustic guitar for more singer-songwriter type stuff. I bet if I would have gotten more approval for my "rock playing", I might be a world class shredder.

The more I got into playing guitar, the more I enjoyed music, and the broader my listening became. The instrument itself became important to me, and I started messing around with classical guitar and took classical lessons.

There's every other guitar player and then there's Chet. He transcended musical boundaries for more than fifty years. God only lays Chet Atkins on you once in a lifetime.

I can't tell you how many people have asked me to show them Stray Cat Strut and that little diminished run on the C. I guess my brain is wired backwards. I don't know what possessed me to do that, but I did.

The gut-strung guitar, the classical guitar, that is a whole different world on its own. When you think what the guitar can do and what every individual player does with a guitar, everyone has their own identity coming through the guitar.

I have seen Tommy Emanuel play; my wife and I went to see him and he just melted my face off. How do you play guitar like that? There are so many people that play at a ridiculous level and I sit there watching them and I'm like, 'Wow, wish I could do that.'

It's just a favorite language to me, that country finger-picking guitar style.

I fingerpick a lot because I can get more of a range of feeling from the guitar than I can when I bash away with a pick.

When I first started fingerpicking, the first thing I learned was 'Don't Think Twice It's Alright' from Bob Dylan.

I just started off on my own by learning the regular chords then the barre chords. Then I'd lean the notes that would go with them.

I love Jimmy Bryant, and I love Albert Lee. Roy Clark. Chet Atkins. I love those pickers.

Lenny Breau dazzled me with his extraordinary guitar playing... I wish the world had the opportunity to experience his artistry.

Finger-picking, in general, is a hypnotic thing. I feel like I'm more A.D.D. all the time, so the music has to be hypnotic.

If you learn classical guitar, you play Bach, and then John Dowland. He's the greatest. He's interesting for many, many reasons.

Ray Cummins is my good friend and one of the best finger pickers around.

I think I had heard Al Di Meola on the radio when I was a kid, that acoustic record, 'Friday Night In San Francisco,' with Paco de Lucía and John McLaughlin. His picking was unbelievable. I thought it was incredible.

I'm a really big fan of Andy McKee - I think he's an amazing acoustic guitar player, and he's taken the torch from where Michael Hedges left off.

Play the pentatonic blues scale, just for fret- and pick-hand dexterity and to mesh them both together.

Hendrix inspired me, but I was still more into Wes Montgomery. I was also into the Allman Brothers around the time of those albums.