Instrument Choice Quotes

In a way, I started out to be a baritone player.

The Les Paul was more challenging because of the weight of it, but the tone was there that the Fender will never have and vice versa. So you have to make a decision as to what you're going to have as your main instrument. After seeing Hendrix, I thought, 'I'll stick with the 'Strat.'

When I first got a guitar, it was a Spanish, classical thing.

Before you worry about what genre it is, about whether it's a loop or a drum, it's about what suits the song. It's using what's within your reach, but also reaching for everything you can. I don't know if I always get it right, because I don't know every sound yet.

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 tried the guitar, but it had two strings too many. It was just too complicated, man! Plus, I grew up with Steve Cropper. There were so many good guitar players, another one wasn't needed. What was needed was a bass.

When I found the music of Monk I finally found music that fit that horn. Every one of his tunes fit it perfectly.

I try to keep my ear to the streets without sacrificing who I am as an artist. If a song needs a drum machine I'll use a drum machine. If it needs a drummer, I'll use a real drummer.

I learnt violin at school and hated it. I wish I'd learnt guitar or piano.

There's some pictures of me playing hollow bodies, but I never last long. I always come back to the acoustic.

Living in Cape Breton, it's really all about fiddle music, so it's not like there were other instruments out there that tempted me and it was like I had to decide which one. It was automatically fiddle, because it's the predominant instrument in Cape Breton Island.

I wanted to take up guitar because playing piano is a little harder. Carrying a keyboard around is harder, and finding a real piano is much harder, and I wanted to play live more, so I figured a guitar would be easier to carry around.

I don't think I picked up the guitar in the first place as a way of getting women. There are probably better ways of doing it.

My sister played the piano. She’s two years older than me, and I always wanted to play something. So my grandmother got the guitar for me, and showed me a couple of chords to start off. And then I got me a book. Next thing you know, I was playing along with sister.

For 'Lonerism,' I really wanted make a non-psychedelic record. That's why the dominant instrument is the synthesiser, but maybe it didn't quite turn out that way.

I just knew I had to play the guitar.

I remember when I was little, my mom asked me, 'Would you like to play the violin or the piano?' I looked at that giant monster and said to myself - I am not going to lock myself on that bench the whole day. This is small and lightweight. I can play from standing, sitting or walking.

If you play the very subtle jazz tunes with acoustic pianos, acoustic bass and it's a dead standard, you are going to play very differently. It depends on the music.

I tried to play flute because all the pretty girls played flute.

My favorite is still the one that I started off with, which is a Les Paul Standard. I've played that at every gig I've ever had. And that's my starting point in the studio.

I wound up sticking with violin because it was the strongest current in my life.

The banjo is my chosen instrument - it's what I write my music on.

I write almost all my songs on an acoustic guitar, even if they turn into rock songs, hard rock songs, metal songs, heavy metal songs, really heavy songs... I love writing on an acoustic because I can hear what every string is doing; the vibrations haven't been combined in a collision of distortion or effects yet.

I think that's why so many school bands start on guitars: because they hide their mistakes with the distortion.

At 12 or 13, I picked up a guitar because my mother made me learn how to play.