Andy Summers Quotes

If you're a guitarist, you should not be intimidated by using your instrument as a synthesizer, but you shouldn't feel that you have to own one, either.

In The Police, in a trio situation - which I've come back to now - it's just so wide open that it does actually provide this arena where you can play with a certain freedom.

I've got four or five records in my head at a time that I try to work on and I would like to do a guitar trio record next - since The Police I've mostly made records with keyboards.

What I wanted to do was play the guitar but I don't like instrumental rock. I think it is tripe.

My favorite sounds are the high, spacey ones that are very ambient.

I spend a lot of time working as a painter and in my studio I go from upstairs where I paint to downstairs where I play and record, so I get this thing crossing over.

I'm just trying to avoid any sort of generic kind of music - I don't want to do generic jazz or fusion.

More recently, I used guitar synthesizer extensively on the two albums I did with Robert Fripp.

For me, the guitar synthesizer is a great writing instrument.

It's been very hard for the guitar as a serious synthesizer to compete with keyboards.

What you aim for, in the first place, is to be as good as you can possibly be. This is what I do, and I'm going to try to be the best in the world.

I don't have a great nostalgia for the past.

I think we are coming to a new era where people will record much faster.

I don't like playing standards. I like to do my own cutting edge work.

There was a period when I'd just come out of college where I'd been playing classical guitar and I suddenly realised that it wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

I would like to play with electronic keyboards again.

The most obvious thing you can't do with a guitar synthesizer is to really sound like a guitar.

Im better for it and I prefer to keep things simple and see what sounds I can get out of my head and hands rather than relying on a sound that someone else created.

If I'm playing a violin thing, for instance, I tend to respond to that sound with the way I finger.

I like to play with someone who can cover a lot of ground and someone with whom you can discuss the language at a reasonable level; otherwise it gets a bit frustrating.

I am pretty embroiled in moving on and moving forward with music.

Of course the playing is important but writing and the establishing of what you are going for is prime too.

Actually, I think my hands are in the best shape they've ever been in terms of what I can do.

Ive also just come off a year and a half playing acoustic shows which is fantastic for the hands, and changes your head a little bit.

I think rock records tend to be very expensive.

Aping what you've already done is just so dangerous and unrewarding.

I was totally into jazz in my teens.

It is not very practical in today’s world when you tour all over the place having a big band.

The thing about photography is, some people surround themselves with extremely strong subject matter. And unless you're a moron, you're going to get a really strong photograph.

To go see a band in a big venue is a difficult experience. I don't really like that too much. I'm not a guy who puts on iTunes and goes, "Oh, what's hot!" I don't need to.

Usually, the best thing is when the band goes to the bar and gets the corner table, we sit there like kings, and then they bring people to us. It's just rock 'n' roll. It's stupid, really.

It's exciting to see if you can create something that sounds, at least to your own ears, exciting.

If you're 20 years old, you've grown up without buying albums.

I actually think I play better now than Ive ever played.

I don't go out much to see bands. I prefer to be on stage.

You don't want to be so far off the planet that you come out with something that doesn't make sense to anybody.

It's hard to avoid the past but one goes forward.

Start with the titles, and then build the music that goes with them.