logo

Quotes About Chords

If anything, even though I can play in the sort of standard string-bending style, in the B.B. King mold and all of that, I've always had a great interest in the more primitive playing, the open chord playing, rhythm and figures.
~ Rory Gallagher
Opium! dread agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain! I had heard of it as I had of manna or of ambrosia, but no further. How unmeaning a sound was it at that time: what solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart! What heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy remembrances!
~ Thomas de Quincey
Speaking softly and slowly, and breathing through the vocal chords in a low voice, has become the mythical ideal voice for a yoga teacher.
~ Gudjon Bergmann
As the chord changes go by, I don't so much think about a static chord voicing changing. I just see the notes on the neck change.
~ Allan Holdsworth
Because you've been exposed to Western tonal music, you know after a certain chord sequence what the next possibilities are. Your brain has compiled a statistical map of which ones are most likely and least likely. If the song keeps hitting the most likely notes, you'll get bored, and if it's always the least likely ones, you'll get irritated.
~ Daniel Levitin
My stepfather met my mother when I was seven years old, and he was a guitar player. So he caught me messing with his guitar, his electric guitar, and he tried to show me some chords, but my hands were too small.
~ George Benson
I have a thing for major 7ths. They've got a very mournful, nostalgic quality to them.
~ Steven Wilson
Nothing matches the sheer euphoria of discovering a new melody or a new batch of chords that just come out of nowhere.
~ Kevin Parker
there was yet the assurance of such power in the preparation of the whole, that we knew her to be merely running over the chords of our appetite with preliminary savors, as a musician acquaints his touch with the keys of an unfamiliar piano before breaking into brilliant and triumphant execution. Within a week she had mastered
~ O. Henry
Then Nature shaped a poet's heart -- a lyre From out whose chords the lightest breeze that blows Drew trembling music, wakening sweet desire.
~ lazarus emma
I liken movies to playing a piano: Sometimes you're playing the chords and different notes with unresolved cadences and playing all major chords that are all over the place, and you're enjoying yourself with a great, simple melody.
~ Jake Gyllenhaal
I definitely don't see myself as much of a singer, because my upbringing is really based around the guitar, learning chord progressions and that sort of thing. So the singing aspect of what I do has been a secondary adventure.
~ M. Ward
When we do reggae, it's normally a one-chord or a two-chord, or whatever it is. With Sting, there'll be chord changes, key changes.
~ Shaggy
It was very challenging, trying to add an orchestra on top of these traditional African rhythms, because as soon as you add any kind of melody or chords over it, it stops feeling African.
~ Ludwig Goransson
I've always been attracted to odd chord changes and interesting melodies.
~ James Righton
Pete Townshend used to crash chords and let the guitar feed back. He's overrated.
~ Ritchie Blackmore
I always say that to compose is to think. Playing is good, it's useful, but it's how your intellect puts the ideas together that will bring hands to write or to play. So, it's really a combination of many things; hearing sounds, hearing layers of counterpoints, of chords.
~ Alexandre Desplat
I could hear it sometimes, but I couldn't play it. I'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used. I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with related changes, I could play the thing I'd been hearing.
~ Charlie Parker
My guitar only has five strings 'cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there.
~ Brian Eno
I was a big fan of Jim Hall as well. I liked his comping style, his accompanying. And that he played, generally, four note chords, the top four strings of the guitar.
~ Gary Burton
I like the sound of a Silvertone amp for myself. It's kind of cleaner guitar sounds when necessary, maybe a little less metal-sounding. But it really doesn't matter what amp I play through; it's really the way I voice chords and play guitar, how I strike the strings.
~ Brian Bell
By adding open strings to even the simplest chords, you can create voicings that sound sophisticated, but are really easy (and fun) to play. They're practical, not intimidating, and most certainly don't sound like 'jazz chords.'
~ John Petrucci
I listened to all those blues records. They were great - Clapton, John Mayall. Then eventually I heard Genesis with Peter Gabriel, and I didn't really understand the difference then, but something struck me about the inversions and the diminished chords... they weren't as bluesy, and I loved it. I found out, that was very baroque-influenced.
~ Yngwie Malmsteen
If the chords change a lot over the course of a song, it's better to stay within the same melodic structure.
~ Max Martin