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I didn't start to collect records and listen to guitar players properly until I went to art school, when I'd already been playing for five years. So my style was already formed, and that's why I think it's so unique.

One thing I've noticed over the years is that young players - I mean 10- and 12-year-olds - really like my guitar style. There's something in my guitar style that they totally can latch onto and learn quickly, and then go from there to your Yngwie Malmsteens or your Steve Vais or whatever.

I've never really been schooled in music theory. I'm a guitar player, and I attack the guitar in a certain way that it not fully unique to me, but it's more unique that some other people.

Let me explain something about guitar playing. Everyone's got their own character, and that's the thing that's amazed me about guitar playing since the day I first picked it up. Everyone's approach to what can come out of six strings is different from another person, but it's all valid.

Great guitar players are a dime a dozen. It is sometimes your very limitations as players that set you apart from the crowd.

I think a lot of modern day guitarists start off playing like Eddie van Halen, and they don't take the time to learn the basics.

But I've come to the point in my evolution on the instrument where I realize that I can't play the same stuff that just a guitar player or organ player would play - and I need to embrace that in a big way.

I don't understand why some people will only accept a guitar if it has an instantly recognizable guitar sound. Finding ways to use the same guitar people have been using for 50 years to make sounds that no one has heard before is truly what gets me off.

I'm glad there are a lot of guitar players pursuing technique as diligently as they possibly can, because it leaves this whole other area open to people like me.

I do not consider myself a guitar player. My father is a guitar player - I'm not.