Bill Gates recently picked up the ukulele. And Warren Buffett is a huge ukulele fan. I even got to strum a few chords with Francis Ford Coppola. It blows my mind that these people, who have everything in the world they could want, have picked up the ukulele and found a little bit of joy.
Sometimes I think that I want to do something strictly basic, really simple. Just with a few chords. But I won't have anything more than two or three sentences in my head. That kind of evaporates once I start playing and then it goes off in whatever direction.
I studied and sang lot of jazz when I was growing up. I think that plays a little bit into some of the things I do vocally, notes that I pick in chords.
Motherhood is at its best when the tender chords of sympathy have been touched.
As soon as you get off stage, that's the most dangerous time for a singer to kiss people because your vocal chords are receptive to any kind of germ.
I don't think I think when I play. I have a photographic memory for chords, and when I'm playing, the right chords appear in my mind like photographs long before I get to them.
I understand I'm supposed to be feminine and dainty, but I'm not. There are two sides to the coin. People are more impressed with things that I do because they almost treat you as if you're handicapped if you're a woman... people can be impressed that I can play a few chords on the guitar.
I write the music because I can't really write lyrics. But I can write chords like Robin's never heard of. So I provide the music for them to add the lyrics to.
Initially, I just used the guitar as a prop. I'd pose with it in front of a mirror in my Kiss makeup when I was skipping school. Then I figured out how to play the main riff to Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water' on just the E string. Next, my old man showed me how to play barre chords, and that's when things started getting really heavy.
Pete Townshend used to crash chords and let the guitar feed back. He's overrated.
The reason we did 'Land of a Thousand Dances' and 'Gloria' on 'Horses' was because I liked repetitious, three-chord rock songs, but I didn't understand that I could write my own. I didn't realize that you could use those chords a million times.
I learned five chords; I thought I knew it all.
There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It's always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.
If the chords change a lot over the course of a song, it's better to stay within the same melodic structure.
Since I was doing all of it myself, I had to decide where I wanted to go with the songs, how to proceed with the chords, if the sound was alright, and all that detail on my own.
It's really weird to be playing chords again. Haven't played chords for a long time. I realised I haven't played chord changes since OK Computer and stuff like that.
If you play more than two chords, you're showing off.
I just like simplicity. I like simple songs, I like simple chords, simple vocals, simple lead guitar. I just like simplicity. That's just the way I like it.
That's the whole point is just to bring people together in a really positive way and laugh together and cry together and just be connected through a simple thing of a few chords.
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.
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.
I like chords that are very lush with all the lush parts taken out.
When you sample something, you're using the crutch of borrowing chords and melodies from a song that's already great, that's already stood the test of time, that's already special. When you're trying to do it all from scratch, you're writing something brand new that has to stand on its own.
You treat the air as a canvas and the paint is the chords that come through your fingers, out of the keyboard.
For some reason, the concept of writing with swing chords was intimidating.
I tend to be freer on the piano. I never took guitar lessons, so my reach exceeds my grasp - what I hear in my head I don't always know how to play. But I love to play over something else. I'm not a self-starter. I get kind of bored with the same three folk chords that I know.
One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz.
Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords - philosophy, art, poetry, love, scandal, and the weather.
See, we started out with a foundation of blues. But then we added people like Miles Davis and John Coltrane to the mix and gave rock n' roll a much more complex structure. It made it possible to play more than three chords.
Any idiot who knows five chords can bang a song together. But it's probably going to be rubbish.
I've been playing swing chords for a long time.
There definitely isn't a structure anymore to how I get ideas. A lot of times I'll just write down a phrase, or I'll have an idea that's attached to just a few chords. Other times, it's work.
Over the years, I've had to learn to play. For example, when 'Lennon' was on Broadway, I learned my way around the guitar chords because originally we were all going to play the instruments without a band.
I don't write poetry and then strum some chords and then fit the words on top of the chords.
I get the same charge from juxtaposition of colors as I do from juxtaposition of chords.
I know a few chords on the guitar, but I wouldn't be able do a show or even be part of a jam session with one.
