Like most guitarists that I have met, I am a self taught. I have played with other bands in the past, but not many. Playing my guitar is a form of escape for me. I can be sick, tired, incoherent and still enjoy playing my instrument. I usually spend several hours a day practicing my guitar.  My inspirations are Al DiMeola, John McLaughlin, Yngwie J. Malmsteen, and Johnny Down.

Basically, I appreciate everything from heavy metal to 20th century (Bartók, Prokovief, Gorecki, Webern, and the like). I like different music for different reasons. Jazz has a lot of what I like out of music, dissonance, key changes, non-standard keys, showmanship, and basically it doesn't have to be conventional. I like things that aren't normal. Hard core bands like Korn and Tool are a great source of angst, sometimes I've got to have anger in my music. Tool is kind of interesting because I noticed that they have a few songs in odd meters of 5/8 and 7/8. Hard core bands that can scream well rate high on my list for amusement. I think I'd flip out if I found a jazz band that had a screaming singer like Kurt Cobain (that would be very strange though). I have an affinity for the sounds of 20th century music. Hearing it for the first time was a strange experience. I grew up thinking that all orchestral music sounded like Vivaldi and Bach. 20th century music is drastically different from this and it was quite shocking to hear it for the first time. Over time, I gained a general interest in this type of music and read a few things about Webern and Schoenberg to discover that I was listing to music with elements of atonality in it. Some day I'll make a stab at writing something atonalish (this will be a long time from now). Rock or popular music is virtually absent of atonal elements. The only pop artist I know of that dabbled in atonal music was Frank Zappa (I have yet to hear this piece from him).