Well, Steve Vai joined my dad's band right around the time when I actually started playing guitar. So he gave me a couple of lessons on fundamentals, and gave me some scales and practice things to work on. But I pretty much learned everything by ear.

There's no difference in a lot of people's minds between good musicians and popular musicians.

And, you know, my dad would show me some things sometimes, but the best things that I got to do were to actually see really good players play up close. That gives you an idea of fingering and technique and what not.

I really want younger audience members to see kids in their early 20's playing Frank's music and to be inspired to take things to a higher level themselves.

For me, the most difficult thing is that I am learning melodies on guitar from some songs whose melodies were not meant to be played on guitar. Ever. They were intended mostly for keyboards or melodic percussion.

Modern records are all made with virtually identical gear, software plug-ins and everything. Everybody wants everything to sound like the last thing that was popular because they're chasing their tails.

If you only ever heard "Valley Girl," or "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow," or a song that has a comedic narrative, you would get some impression that that was novelty music, but that's the only stuff that ever got on the radio. You can make the argument that that's what has confused generations as to what his music's about.