Steve Vai. He is one the great­est gui­tarists of the last 3 decades. Start­ing in the 80s he played in Frank Zap­pas tour band after get­ting gui­tar lessons by famous fusion gui­tarist Joe Satri­ani and attend­ing to Berklee Music College.

Steven Siro “Steve” Vai (born June 6, 1960) is a three time Grammy Award-winning Italian-American rock gui­tarist, song­writer, vocal­ist and pro­ducer. After start­ing his pro­fes­sional career as a music tran­scrip­tion­ist for Frank Zappa, Vai recorded and toured in Zappa’s band for two years, from 1980 to 1982. The gui­tarist began a solo career in 1983 and has released 13 solo albums as of 2008. Apart from his work with Frank Zappa, Vai has also recorded and toured with Pub­lic Image Ltd., Alca­trazz, David Lee Roth, and Whites­nake. Vai has been a reg­u­lar tour­ing mem­ber of the G3 Con­cert Tour which began in 1996. In 1999 Vai started his own record label, Favored Nations, intend­ing to show­case, as Vai describes, “…artists that have attained the high­est per­for­mance level on their cho­sen instruments.”

For more infor­ma­tion check out the appen­dant Wikipedia article.

Like most vir­tuos gui­tar play­ers, Vai and his achieve­ments on the gui­tar are not suited for just one genre. His range of sound has got ele­ments of hard rock, pro­gres­sive metal, heavy metal and fusion. A real artist, be sure to check out the web­site and buy at least one album (if you like instru­men­tal gui­tar records).