Top 70 Acoustic Guitar Quotes

When people say the words ‘singer-songwriter,’ I think they have an image in their heads of someone with an acoustic guitar who is a bit woe-is-me. I’d like to think that I’m not one of those. I’m quite a happy person.

I was lonely as a young teenager and my only companion was an acoustic guitar. I would bring it with me on modeling trips.

At 13, I loved how so many of my peers sang and played acoustic guitar, so I started recording videos with covers of famous songs and posting them online.

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.

The early influences, in many ways, were in Baltimore. I was passing open windows where there might be a radio playing something funky. In the summertime, sometimes there’d be a man sitting on a step, playing an acoustic guitar, playing some kind of folk blues. The seed had been planted.

At the Muddy Waters thing, I played the first song by myself on an acoustic guitar. I thought that was great that y’all did that tribute to Muddy Waters. I had a real good time.

I got this Christmas gift with the entire Beatles catalog. I had fun trying to duplicate what I was hearing on these records, only using the instruments I had at hand – an acoustic guitar, and that’s all. It was endlessly amusing to me to try to imitate John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s harmonies using the guitar.

I started out with acoustic guitar and loop pedal because I thought I wanted to be Ed Sheeran.

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.

But the reality is when you write a song, you should be able to strip away all the instruments and just have a song right there with an acoustic guitar and a voice, and the song should be good.

Choosing an acoustic guitar for a live setting can be different from picking out one for recording. One doesn’t always work for the other. The sonic properties can be vastly different.

After Hurricane Sandy, my family and I stayed in our apartment in lower Manhattan before things normalized. We’re lucky enough to live on a bit of high ground, so we weren’t flooded… but it was intense. Since there was no light, water, or electricity, I spent a lot of time playing acoustic guitar in the evenings.

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.

To stand up on a stage alone with an acoustic guitar requires bravery bordering on heroism. Bordering on insanity.

I write on the acoustic guitar, I write some on the piano, but I’ve been messing around with these guitar pedals and drum machines, educating myself in that world.

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.

I learned tabla for three years when in school, then started picking up the basics of the acoustic guitar when in college.

I wrote all my songs on my main instruments, and the songs I would record in my bedroom were just acoustic guitar, mandolin, and sometimes bass. I really like the texture the mandolin added to my music, but my fingers were too big to play it… I could only do little riffs and whatever.

Mumford & Sons have really opened up everyone’s ears to music with instruments again, acoustic-based music… it’s reassuring for people like me who have been brought up on acoustic guitar.

When we did the ‘Skin and Bones’ tour I didn’t even own an acoustic guitar, I had to borrow one from my friend.

It is really hard to write something high-energy and upbeat on acoustic guitar.

I started on acoustic guitar after I heard Leadbelly and Big Bill Broonzy.

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.

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 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.

I love the subtlety and tonal range of the acoustic guitar.

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.

And I only really like to play the acoustic guitar.

I remember writing Sunday Morning’ and Gwen wasn’t feeling well that day and I had an acoustic guitar and I started singing, Somebody is feeling quite ill ‘ and that became Sunday Morning.’

I know how to play the acoustic guitar, but I’m learning to play the electric guitar now. I’m sure it will be a wonderful experience.

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.’

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.

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’d say it’s harder to play with an acoustic guitar strapped over your shoulder for a few hundred people than it is to play in front of thousands with an entire bombastic band behind you.

I suppose my little Martin acoustic guitar is quickly becoming a prize possession. It’s a lovely guitar. I bought it at the Cambridge Folk Festival in 2001 before I had cleaned up.

If you can’t play it on an acoustic guitar or a grand piano then it’s not a song.

One of the signature things about Heart was the acoustic guitar in a rock format, which you didn’t hear that often.

I love playing acoustic guitar because I strum with my hands to feel more connected.

My stuff was more of a folk coffeehouse thing, with more acoustic guitar, just me doing a single, and then adding on instruments and voices, with emphasis on lyrics and singing and light kind of acoustic jazz.

I have a 1969 Grammer Johnny Cash acoustic guitar, and it’s so inspirational.

I’m a really big fan of Andy McKee – I think he’s an amazing acoustic guitar player, and he’s taken the torch from where Michael Hedges left off.

Back in the Eighties, I used to write ballads on my acoustic guitar, so it seems very natural to me to go back to a little singing.

Every one of the songs was based around picking an acoustic guitar. That was part of the concept from the beginning, that the tempos were going to go from slow to almost mid-tempo.

I try not to punish the audience by making them listen to too much acoustic guitar.

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.

Dorsey played the upright bass and steel guitar, as well as acoustic guitar. Johnny played acoustic guitar and together they were fabulous songwriters and singers.

A lot of writing I do on tour. I do a lot on airplanes. At home, I write a lot, obviously. When I write a song, what I usually do is work the lyric out first from some basic idea that I had, and then I get an acoustic guitar and I sit by the tape recorder and I try to bang it out as it comes.

When you break out the acoustic guitar, the words are the focal point unless you’re the Jimi Hendrix of the acoustic guitar. So the words have to have meaning.

When I was born, my dad was playing music, so I’m pretty sure he was singing to me in the womb. I was born into music, in a way, because he was playing acoustic guitar. I was around an instrument growing up.

My first time doing music was on acoustic guitar. I had a friend from Texas who taught me so much country, I entered a few country competitions. But eventually, I got tired of it.

In the early days, I had very little idea about arrangements, and I wrote songs a little flat, as it were, just on an acoustic guitar. They didn’t really have quite enough nuance.