A Quote by Steve Vai

I designed a guitar for Ibanez and then they started manufacturing it - it's called the Jem - it's 26 years old and I still play it. As a kid I liked Les Pauls and Strats, but they had limitations for the kind of playing I wanted to do.
There was a show in Germany called Beat Club, and they had a lot of bands playing live. And I had this master plan, at 11 years old, I wanted to play electric guitar, but I knew... We lived in a small apartment, there was no way that was going to happen. I told my parents I wanted a classical guitar and I wanted to start studying classical guitar. So then a few years later, I think around 16 or so, I started playing electric. But that was my, my plan as an 11 year old. I thought I was so crafty.
I really enjoy working with luthiers, and have a couple of really old Les Pauls and one of my original Strats that I still carry on the road.
I started playing mandolin when I was three or four years old because I was too small to be playing guitar. As I got older and more responsible with holding instruments, I was allowed to play my mom's guitar that she had.
When I was nine years old, I started playing guitar, and I took classical guitar lessons and studied music theory. And played jazz for a while. And then when I was around fourteen years old, I discovered punk rock. And so I then tried to unlearn everything I had learned in classical music and jazz so I could play in punk rock bands.
Charley Patton is the original inspiration. I didn't play anything when I was a kid. Then, when I was 20, I went into my mam's bedroom because she had a double mirror, and I wanted to see what the back of my hair was doing. She had an alarm-clock radio, and it came on with this old guy moaning and hollering, playing this strange guitar.
I've been playing the viola since I was 6 years old, and then I decided to switch it up a bit, so I've been playing the violin since I was 11. I started playing the piano when I was 11, and I started playing the guitar when I was 10.
I think my mom always wanted to play the guitar, and somehow she projected that to me. So I started learning to play guitar when I was five years old, but actually I'd never managed to get the academic side of it. So even up to today, I don't know how to read or write music.
I started playing guitar when I was 6 or 7 years old, and I think that, within a week of getting my first guitar, I started writing music. I just love it.
I always liked playing music and I always wanted to be good at playing guitar. I always saw myself as an old man living in the mountains playing a guitar, but I didn't really turn that into a desire to be a professional musician or a singer or a rock star or anything like that.
I asked for a guitar when I was 8 years old for Christmas. I have no idea why. I never had any guitar heroes. I still don't. But there must have been something in me because I've been playing for 30 years.
I had this idea... I wanted the sound to sing and have that thickness but yet still have an edge so that it could articulate. So my dad and I designed the guitar... the one that was made from an old fireplace.
First, I started to play the organ. I did that until I was 11. From the age of 11 to 13, I gave up music entirely. And then at 13, I picked up the guitar, and after one and a half years, I started practicing intensively. I began playing in rock bands, and it was there that I discovered that the music I liked to write was always instrumental.
I've never mastered the guitar. Either I was playing it, or it was playing me; it depends how you look at it. As a kid, the only things I had to do was go to school, do my homework, and play guitar.
I started out on guitar when I was nine years old, and I started playing bars and stuff when I was thirteen, and I've been playing ever since.
The only thing I ever really wanted was a Strat .. I started playing guitar after seeing Jimi Hendrix on TV the day he died...then I got Deep Purples' Fireball album which was also a big influence .. I have a collection of more than 200 of them that includes Strats from every year since March 1954 - the first month the Strat was made
I think if you really put your mind to something you can do it. Five and a half years ago I couldn't stand on stage and play guitar. I didn't have enough talent as a kid to play guitar. I started really late. I hired a guitar teacher when I was in Nashville and I applied myself and stayed focused.
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