Everyone, no matter how good, has their own playing style. Most guitarists relate to their emotions. Some obtain lessons paying money or finding someone with the knowledge to share. I personally have not had lessons.

"I didn't know about verses or choruses," says Carlos Santana. "We just jammed." (Tolinski 82).

Quite a lot of bands do improvisation on stage and playing formally as a band. Led Zeppelin, The Doors, The Grateful Dead, and Pink Floyd are just a few.

Maybe out of all this mayhem someone would want to give some kind of explanation as to how their life went along during those great moments of recording. Guitar World Magazine did a Reader's Choice 100 Greatest Solos of All Time poll. The results heard here.

"I winged it," says Jimmy Page with a touch of pride. "I had prepared the overall structure of the guitars parts, but not the actual notes. When it came time to record the solo, I warmed up and recorded three of them. They were all quite different from each other."(Bowcott 58) This is their number one vote for the song 'Stairway To Heaven,' and the most played radio request in music history.

"The story behind 'Eruption' is strange," says Edward Van Halen. "While we were recording the album, I showed up early one day and started to warm up because I had a gig on the weekend, and I wanted to practice my solo-guitar spot. Our producer at the time, Ted Templeman, happened to walk by, and he asked, 'What's that? Let's put it to tape!' "I played it two times for the record and we kept the one that seemed to flow. Ted liked it, and everyone else agreed that we should throw it on the album. I didn't even play it right-there's a mistake at the top end of it. Whenever I hear it, I always think, 'Man, I could've played it better.'"(Bowcott 58)

"Randy Rhoads would put down his solos pretty quickly once he had them worked out. We'd do two or three takes to get the majority of the solo down, then maybe punch in a few little fix ups." recalls Blizzard of Ozz (Ozzy Osbourne) engineer Max Norman.(Bowcott 61)

Some guitarists write their music from experiences with women or emotions, you name it. "'Little Wing' was a very sweet girl that came around that gave me her whole life and more if I wanted it." says Jimi Hendrix. (Bowcott 66)

Many good guitarists go for one thing. "I was trying to write the ultimate pop song," explained the late Kurt Cobain. "When I came up with the guitar part, Krist [Novoselic, bass] looked at me and said, 'That's so ridiculous.' So I made the band play it for an hour and a half."(Bowcott 72)

Others just didn't wish it upon themselves. "When 'Sweet Child O' Mine' was written, it was a joke as far as I was concerned," says Slash [Guns N Roses]. "I was just f****n' around when I came up with that riff."(Bowcott 76)

With the guitar there are certain boundaries one can burst through with the right given moment. "Nothing can duplicate the sheer power and feeling you get from standing in front of your amp and bashing on your guitar."-James Hetfield [Metallica] (Paul 56)

Everyone who plays guitar has to have a 'first' guitar. "My first guitar was a Strat, but in those days, owning a solid body guitar was a problem because it was impossible to get your hands on a decent amplifier." says Jimmy Page. (Tolinski 65)

"I had a few different guitars in the beginning, including one that I made myself. I had a Japanese Guyatone, a Burns, a Hofner Futurama, then finally a Fender Stratocaster." says Jeff Beck. (Tolinski 65)

Some are skeptical. "My mom thought the guitar was going to fizzle out in two weeks-that it was just a fad-and that was in 1958!"-Jeff Beck. (Tolinski 72)

"When I found the guitar, I refused to take lessons. This was my real emotional release, and I didn't want to be taught how to approach the instrument." says Eddie Van Halen. (Garbarini 76)

"It's anything from a very heavy, stunned "Whoa, what just happened?" to a very high...I can't relate it exactly to an orgasm, but sometimes when you come out of it, you're exhausted. It's just emotions pouring out." says Eddie Van Halen. (Garbarini 78) "A song has to take me for a ride," says Ed. (Garbarini 82)

A lot of people, say that Rock n'Roll came from the blues. "The blues are probably the most important thing that America has ever given to the world. It speaks so deeply, because we all probably come from Africa. We just went north and turned white. But if you cut anybody open, bone is white and blood is red. It's kind of deep you know." says Keith Richards [Rolling Stones]. (Richards 59)

The two important guitar style name brands would be Fender Stratocaster and Gibson Les Paul. They are the most widely used guitar in the world. "In the years between 1948 and 1954, Leo Fender designed the Telecaster (the world's first successful mass-produced solid body electric guitar), the Precision Bass (the world's first electric bass guitar) and the Stratocaster (for many, the world's coolest electric guitar).(Perna 230)

"Les however, was still intent on finding an instrument that would give him the sound he was after. In 1941, he built a 20-pound monstrosity he called "The Log," named after the four-by-four piece of pine he used for the body. He added a Gibson neck with a Larson fingerboard, two pickups he fashioned from the inner coils of an electric clock, and a pair of side wings from an old Epiphone to make it look like a guitar.(Carter 194)

Expressing knowledge from your mind in a sample is beneficial for the thinker. I don't memorize the little stuff, I learn and move on. The experiments are coming, they are not already done.

Works Cited:

Tolinski, Brad. "1969 The Greatest Year in Rock." Guitar World June 1999: 82.

Richards, Keith. "Sound Bites Quotable Quotes from the Last Ten Years of Guitar World." Guitar World March 1999: 59.

Bowcott, Nick. "Reader's Choice 100 Greatest Solos of All Time." Guitar World September 1998: 58, 61, 66, 72, 76.

Paul, Alan. "Millennium Madness Bash to the Future." Guitar World October 1999: 56.

Tolinski, Brad. "Millennium Madness Heavy Friends." Guitar World October 1999: 65, 72.

Garbarini, Vic. "Millennium Madness The Well-Tempered Guitarist." Guitar World October 1999: 76, 78, 82.

Perna, Alan Di. "The End Page." Guitar World October 1999: 230.

Carter, Walter. The Man Behind The Model Les Paul. Los Angeles. General Publishing Group: 1994.

Submitted by Anthony Giannoumis of Greencastle Pa, and written by his brother, Aged 16