Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There were bars that began to have acoustic musicians play, it was 1970: Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, America, The Eagles, all that kind of stuff was popular. It was very easy for me to just kind of move in and be noticed.
When I was a kid and writing more acoustic songs, I was doing it more for the attention than for the love of the music. I knew I needed to change something because I wasn't having fun and wasn't liking the songs I was writing.
With my projects, I really like the extreme high-tech stuff, but I also like the other end, the acoustic things. So it seems like those meet on an iPad, where you make shapes but the sounds coming out of it are really acoustic.
My foundation is acoustic guitar, and it is finger-picking and all of that and sort of an orchestral style of playing. Lead guitar came later, more out of the necessity to do so because of expectations in a particular situation.
It took me a while to get an electric guitar and a bass and amps and stuff. Playing the acoustic guitar was much easier and more affordable. But I was always listening to the radio and was interested in all the rock and pop music.
There have never been a lot of female guitarists out there, so most of my influences were male. Acoustically, I followed Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon. Also, John Lennon and Paul McCartney - both incredible acoustic guitar players.
Like, when I write a song, the song comes first before production. Everything is written on an acoustic guitar so you can strip away everything from it and have it be equally as entertaining and good without the bells and whistles.
If I'm opening up for George Jones or playing a complete honky-tonk, I do true country music. But if it's a complete rock club, I'll do some country and a little bit of this hillbilly acoustic country metal or whatever it's called.
My dad always played a lot of music, so I heard him playing all the time, and then I decided that I wanted to learn to play guitar, so I got an acoustic and started taking lessons. I wanted to be able to shred like Yngwie Malmsteen.
In 2002 I did a big tour of Europe, by train, by myself, on foot, all the time walking from train station to the venue, in a weird town, in a weird country. I'd brought an acoustic guitar with me but it got broken somehow in transit.
I even played bass for a while. Besides playing electric guitar, I'd also get asked to play some acoustic stuff. But, since I didn't have an acoustic guitar at the time, I used to borrow one from a friend so I could play folk joints.
I had different bands. I played with the Acoustic Warriors for the most part, without girl singers. It was the same kind of sound, acoustic guitar, bass, with violin and sometimes accordion, and the guys would sing, that kind of thing.
I'm pursuing soundtrack work in the southern California area and down the line I plan to make a moody, intense acoustic album. Not all acoustic, but an acoustic - oriented guitar record that I've already written most of the material for.
At my high school, there were always kids carrying acoustic guitars around, which is why I named my band the Mountain Goats. I didn't want to seem like one of those guys who brought his guitar to the party whether you asked him to or not.
The acoustic guitar is my first love, I've been playing since I was a kid, and I feel the most at home when I'm sitting with an acoustic, I just love it so much. It changes my heart. I love the vibration and frequencies and the resonance.
As a songwriter, I've got a lot of facets, so to speak. When you come to a live show, you get a better sense of that, because you'll see me performing a piano ballad and some acoustic songs and some not acoustic songs, all in the same set.
I was in Australia in about 1996 when I played some acoustic guitar for some guys at a studio down there. They were pretty happy with it, and mentioned doing an album, so about a year later I met some people who were interested in recording.
I'm making a record that's half stripped down acoustic which is the way I perform a lot and half of it is very produced. It's really hard to keep music simple but I was trying to keep it simple and focus on one or two instruments and vocals.
There was nobody at the time who was playing slide guitar like Johnny, and nobody, or no white guys at least, that was playing country blues like that on the acoustic guitar. And it was at that point that I realized what Johnny had to offer.
When Taylor Swift was first beginning to really take off, a couple of guys I knew in her band called and offered me a job on her tour playing acoustic guitar and singing background vocals, and they thought I would be a really good fit for it.
So I played the acoustic guitar and harmonica and stomped my foot and I think I was right in assuming that Greenwich Village would be the best place to perform my own material and possibly get some attention, move on to making records and all.
Did Muddy Waters play an acoustic? Well of course he did. But did he turn his back on being able to plug it in and play louder? No, he plugged in and turned it up and got miles and miles ahead of the game in one fateful act of just plugging in.
For me it always comes down to what is a good song and I'm very old fashioned in the way that I like to make songs that have something classic about them whether you can play them with an orchestra or an electro synthesizer or an acoustic guitar.
I tend to write on an acoustic guitar or the piano. I have kind of a rule: if I can't sit down and play this and get the song over, I don't take it to the band, because most any good song, you can sit down and deliver it with a piano or a guitar.
When I started writing songs for Temple of the Dog, I went to my room with my acoustic guitar, and I was happy staying in that mode. It was more chordal based and more lyric driven. I enjoyed not making riff-based songs built around a guitar idea.
I find that I get nervous before I play. Even sound checks can give me anxiety and screw with my mind. But as long as I can play a little acoustic guitar backstage if I'm feeling nervous, so I don't have to walk in there cold turkey, I'll be fine.
There's very little synthesized sound in the 'Arrival' score. There are a couple of synthesized beats in there, but 99 percent of the sounds in there are acoustic in origin and either played or sung by a musician or a singer and recorded in a room.
When I write a song, I always start on acoustic guitar, because that's a good test of a song, when it's really open and bare. You can often mislead yourself if you start with computers and samples and programming because you can disguise a bad song.
I aspire to be someone like Gillian Welch. What she does is play part of a group with two acoustic guitars with harmonies. She plays folk. However, there is no one that sounds like Gillian Welch. I aspire to come up with a unique sound like she has.
It all started in a local park in El Paso called Madeleine Park. At a ditch, a very small ditch, that everybody used to go skateboarding in. It was me and Jim Ward and an acoustic guitar. He and I constructed the very first phases of At The Drive In.
Going to high school in rural Florida, we always partied down in the woods. Somebody - one of the rednecks - would leave class and mow a path out to a field, and we'd drive out there. Dude, every party I went to was lit by a bonfire. Acoustic guitar.
I was in Redwood for almost six years. It was an acoustic trio that I still think was the best band I've ever been a part of. We do have a double CD of the Redwood stuff available called 'Lost But Not Really.' I'm very proud of the old Redwood stuff.
My favorite music isn't necessarily the songs that One Direction come out with. That doesn't mean to say I don't secretly really love some of our songs, which I do. My personal tastes... I actually like quite a bit acoustic and more mellow kinds of things.
I did a smaller gig with an acoustic guitar and a drum machine. In one song, something wrong happened with the drum machine. I tried to cover up the mistake by playing faster and improvising a new song but it became crazy, and I had to admit it was all a mess.
As much as I love acoustic Neil Young - and I do deeply - I may be more passionate about the electric. Luckily it's not a contest, and we never have to make that choice. But Neil Young on an electric guitar - I feel like I've never seen or heard anything like it.
I'm very much of that old-school mentality of believing that if it works with an acoustic guitar and a vocal, then it should work within any format - and especially when most of my live work is just guitar and vocals, so it really does have to work with only that.
When you have an acoustic bass in the ensemble it really changes the dynamic of the record because it kind of forces everybody to play with a greater degree of sensitivity and nuance because it just has a different kind of tone and spectrum than the electric bass.
Once we played for the Princess of Monaco in Paris. We were the biggest ducks ever, wearing rented tuxedos. We trashed the party, took a bunch of girls and champagne in limos underneath the Eiffel Tower, and set up an acoustic show. It was like a Hilary Duff movie.
It's been neat to find out different writing strategies. I've been in the room with so many different writers. Sometimes, you write with tracks, and other times, with acoustic guitars. That's been really a cool thing, because it brings out different lyrics with you.
Much of the music I remember from camp was unofficial: the songs a counselor would play for us on acoustic guitar or that an older camper would sing after telling us a tale of his hard-knock life. We couldn't get enough of 'One Tin Soldier' or 'Cat's in the Cradle.'
What Jimmy Page did was pretty inspiring for guitar players. He married a lot of acoustic elements into hard rock. The kind of chords he used were very left of center, with a lot of dissonance - I absorbed that like a sponge. It's all over the music I write, always.
With 'Acoustic Soul,' I saw my music as sparse. But I didn't do that because I was making a commitment to be commercial. That's what made 'Acoustic Soul' so difficult to produce. It took 2 1/2 years because I couldn't figure out what I wanted and still be commercial.
I started playing bluegrass with my family, so there were the G, C and D chords. I was playing a Martin acoustic because that's what Carter Stanley of the Stanley Brothers played. Then I got into the really raw blues of Hound Dog Taylor and started on electric guitar.
Originally, AXS TV came to me last year and asked me if I'd be interested in doing an acoustic 'Live from the Grammy Museum' performance. But I was bound and determined to do an electric show with this great band to dispel any notion that I wasn't a 'rock guy' in Styx.
I can't tell you how many times I've had a friend tell me, in this tender and discreet voice, 'It's just you and me bro, and I want to tell you the truth: make a record of you and an acoustic guitar. Please. That's what everybody actually likes.' That's so funny to me.
I'm looking forward to some more solo acoustic dates. That's a lot of fun for me, because I get to be alone with the song. And I get to hear every little nuance; if my instrument does something that I wasn't expecting, I get to chase that. Chase that down a little bit.
Some songs are just going to be acoustic with just maybe some light background stuff going on and maybe violin or something like that. Or sax - I mean, I'm definitely having some sax. That's just what I love. It's going to be jazz-rock stuff. That's what I'm aiming for.
For me, the best thing I can do is play live. The best way for me to put over what I'm trying to do is to play live. Whether it's an acoustic show, electric or whatever... if I shine at all, that's where it all really happens - it just took me a while to rediscover that.
I suppose I am a frustrated musician so I annoy my family by playing guitar in the house. I used to be into acoustic stuff but my son Joseph is learning drums, so now I have an electric guitar and we play Metallica. We have an amp and a PA in the garage with his drum kit.
If I want to do an orchestral record, if I want to do an acoustic record, if I want to do a death-metal record, if I want to do a jazz record - I can move in whichever direction I want, and no one is going to get upset about that. Except maybe my manager and my record company.