By: Staff
Every month the writers at Guitar International have the chance to speak with dozens of guitarists, both famous and yet to be discovered artists, for the interview section of the site. As we edit these articles, getting them ready for you, our readers, we always run across those quotes that catch our attention. Those sentences that make us stop in our tracks and do a double take. They make us laugh, shake our heads, drop our jaws and/or change the way we think about the guitar or music in general.
Since we’ve enjoyed these quotes so much we thought we’d share them with you in case you missed them the first time around. Here are our favorites from June, 2010.
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GI’s Favorite Guitar Quotes from June, 2010
- “For me, rhythm is a type of divine mathematics in a way.” – John McLaughlin: Musical and Spiritual Connection
- “Right before the moment when you don’t have a metaphor left in your body, you can’t even speak, you can’t even order food, when you’ve dissected yourself to the brink of insanity. Right before that moment when you can’t do anymore, there’s this golden window of opportunity where you’re so in tune with the record that whatever’s coming out of you, you should be paying attention to. You really know what the record needs at that moment to be complete. Right before you fall off the cliff you reach out and grab that last bit of inspiration.” – Conversation with Silversun Pickups frontman Brian Aubert
- “Everything you put into the guitar wood wise will color the sound. The choice of woods doesn’t change the tone as much on a solid-body as it does a classical or an archtop, but different woods do offer different sound qualities.” – Interview with Chicago Luther Dan Koentopp
- “I think that, maybe there isn’t too much difference when you’re up there playing the songs…when I’m up on stage I’m thinking that I look exactly the same as I did thirty years ago, but that’s probably not the case.” – K.K. Downing: 30 Years of British Steel
- “He [Les Paul] was always this very iconic figure that was a major musician, but also a major inventor. When I was growing up, I’m old enough to be around when the Ventures started using the first fuzz box, I would record myself and got into overdubbing. When I started doing that I realized how inventive Les must have been to have come up with all of those recording techniques, just a genius.” – Lee Ritenour discusses his “6 String Theory”
- “We used to rack our brains, putting mics here and trying that over there. But, I’ve always found that the best tone comes when you walk up to the cabinet and stand a mic about a foot away from the speaker. Most of it is finding the best mic and knowing where to put it. If the source sounds good, you can use a Shure SM57 at a slight angle, pretty close to the speaker, it’s going to sound good.” – Pat Travers: Groove and Tone
- “The words sometimes just seem to find their own place. They tell you what song they want to be in. I know that sounds silly, but it’s true. Lyrics will come to me and tell me that they want to live in the “house” of a particular song that I’m working on.” – Pearl: Little Immaculate White Fox
- “One of the biggest problems I faced early on was just figuring out where and how to properly place the mics. Since I was using two mics, it was really important to find good placement and direction for them so that I could get a solid sound down on the recording. Of course, the first thing I did was point them both at the soundhole, which was a huge mistake. ” – Conversation with Classical Guitar Virtuoso Matt Palmer
- “It means the absolute world to me. I can’t thank everyone enough that supported me through all of this. This is the thrill of a lifetime to be involved in the Crossroads Festival in any way, let alone performing at one of the worlds most exclusive, and largest one-day music festivals. Every person that I’ve dreamed of one day doing a show with is going to be there. All in one day! I’m still in disbelief that a dream like this could really be happening.” – Play Crossroads winner Ryan McGarvey
- “The reason I called it Reminisce was because it’s kind of a nod to all of the different eras of guitar that have influenced me. You can hear influence from Grant Green, or Hendrix or Santana on certain tracks. The trick was to bring the record together as a whole, even though these influences are coming from all over the place.” – Eric Krasno gets Reminiscent
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Lee Ritenour and Pat Martino Working in the Studio
