Music has always been a strong presence in my life. It has always been around. There are lots of musicians on both sides of my family: my paternal grandfather played acoustic guitar; my mom's youngest brother plays guitar, there are professional musicians on both sides of the family, my parents are very decent singers, so is my sister, I consider myself very musical, my wife is a classically trained pianist (and she plays a lot, too), our children are very musical as well. I grew up with a ton of music: Beatles, Stones, Motown, Samba, Rock'n Roll, Jazz, Reggae, Flamenco, Zydeco, Fado, Gospel, Tango, Blues, Bossa Nova...

My paternal grandpa played fun songs on his acoustic, Italian songs mostly, and I enjoyed his music, but it was my uncle, my mom's youngest brother, who really made me want to know more: he had an electric guitar, I can't remember which make and model, probably not a good one by today's standards, by I was fascinated by the buttons and controls and how loud that thing got! My uncle had a cover band, mostly Beatles and Stones, some other 60's stuff, really, really cool stuff. I watched a couple of Beatles movies and bought my first album (Help) at 8 years of age. At 10, I decided the Beatles were always going to be cool, but the Stones won my preference as my number one band. Along with Mick Taylor, Keith Richards, Ron Wood and Brian Jones, my two other main influences are Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix. I am not talking about who I have ultimately come to admire and learn from. I am talking about those who inspired me to pick up a guitar. By the way, guitar was my second attempt at music. I first started at 12, playing the piano, but I could not find one single blues/boogie woogie piano teacher anywhere, and my "classical-music-only-do-not-insist" teacher was strict and I left after a year, without having learned what I wanted. But I managed to learn something, and I did have fun. I found out I could figure out melodies, right hand in piano talk, and I also decided that I liked piano a lot, but it wasn't really the instrument I wanted to learn. That's when I started to listen to a lot of guitar music again, after a progressive rock period. All of a sudden my life was full of high gain music: Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, AC/DC, JHE, Zappa, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Van Halen...so I got myself a guitar. It was a Giannini (Jazzmaster replica) that was actually pretty decent; not great, but a good beginner level electric; got a teacher that was very cool, my friend to this day, and took lessons for three months, then I moved, sold my guitar and bought a guitar that was too much of a hype and almost ruined my musical life. It was the mid-eighties and EVH was all the rage if you were a guitar player. Quite frankly, how dumb of me, what was I thinking? I really liked VH (and still do), but never wanted to play that kind of music. I never liked the Floyd Rose and for 15 years I had only that one Kramer (still have it), a guitar that never really stayed in tune. I removed the tremolo bar pretty much as soon as I bought the thing. But I never wanted to sell it, and I lived in a place where having a second guitar is almost unheard of, so I was kind of stuck with a bad guitar, and so my playing was very off and on. Had a few bands, but never liked the ego thing, I am more for balance and harmony and prefer to stay from unnecessary conflict, so never really got into the band thing too much, but jammed a lot with friends' bands, which always seemed to work well.

Anyway...

I bough a Schecter in 1999. Once again, I wasn't paying attention: I wasn't aware of the "shredder guitar" thing, didn't know about Korean-made guitars. The fact is that I developed a skin irritation that seemed to have come from the strings, but my fingers looked corroded like an extreme case of being under water too long, nothing was ever diagnosed but the thing was painful and I didn't play from 1999 until 2009. Until then, all I ever knew were the three months of beginner lessons and some failed attempts at re-starting. Too busy raising a family, working too much, no time, maybe you know what I am talking about: excuses.

I felt bad one day, after answering "yes, I play a little guitar" to the casual conversation question "Do you play an instrument?" and decided that I did love playing music and playing guitar, and that it was important to me to keep doing it, but I also came to the realization that I would have to decide whether I was a guitar player or a guitar owner. I would not have to reach any specific level of playing, just do my best to