Instrument Comparison Quotes

The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer.

The lute I use has 10 courses and 19 strings, which is quite a lot of strings and a quite different fingerboard width from a classical guitar. I use a combination of flesh and nail when plucking the strings.

I have always stood in awe of the camera. I recognize it for the instrument it is, part Stradivarius, part scalpel.

If you take a violin, you can make it sound 50 different ways. Not just pizzicato and played by the bow, but ponticello, and harmonics, and tremolos. If you take an oboe and play it, there's about one way you can make it sound: like an oboe.

A computer is like a violin. You can imagine a novice trying first a phonograph and then a violin. The latter, he says, sounds terrible. That is the argument we have heard from our humanists and most of our computer scientists. Computer programs are good, they say, for particular purposes, but they aren’t flexible. Neither is a violin, or a typewriter, until you learn how to use it.

Actually, when I was very young, first starting to play, I think I probably listened more to clarinet players than to saxophones.

You're in direct contact with the music by having the strings under your fingers. It's not mechanical like a piano.

The sound of the harpsichord resembles that of a bird-cage played with toasting-forks.

The guitar is a much more efficient machine than a computer. More responsive.

I have somewhat [Taylor's or Gallagher's guitars], but I like the power of the Martins.

The soprano has all those other instruments in it. It's got the soprano song voice, flute, violin, clarinet, and tenor elements and can even approach the baritone in intensity.

The lute is tuned differently than the guitar and of course it has many more strings.

II know very, very little about the ukulele, but I actually grew up playing the viola from 4th grade through high school.

Guitar is for the head, drums are for the chest, but bass gets you in the groin

I'm an electronic guy, I'm a freak for electronic music but real instruments, the dynamic range of it, and the emotions, there's no comparison.

I actually write more on guitar than I do on piano.

You know, the ukulele itself is not a very loud instrument, all right? And, you know, compared to like a trumpet, right? A trumpet is really loud.

If you play the guitar, you've got to hold the chords down with one hand while you play with the other, so you're limited to one hand. But the piano is the king of instruments because you have your 10 fingers, which become the 10 members of the orchestra.

The oboe sounds like a clarinet with a cold.

Someday we may have as many followers as the harpsichord.

It is at least 10 times more difficult to get a good synthesiser sound than on an acoustic instrument.

If you put your hand on the piano, you play a note. It's in tune. But if you put it on the violin, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. You have to figure it out.

The nice thing about the violin repertoire is that it's small enough that you can plan on learning everything at some point - whereas the piano repertoire is so enormous it wouldn't be possible unless you're a learning machine.

A violin neck is much smaller than the guitar's, so it's much easier to play wide intervals on one violin string. On the guitar, you really have to stretch to play them.