Ballistic Peter Petev - Guitar
Born in Bulgaria on 09/23/1970, began playing guitar at the age of 10 and going to a classical guitar school. At this time I was influenced by guitar players such as Blackmore, Page and Hendrix.

Hard job for a guitarist to play rock & roll in a country with communist government.  There wasn't a lot of info such as guitar tabs, tapes and LP's, so I played whatever I found interesting.  Going to a classical guitar school helped me a lot especially learning scales and reading music.  There was only a few rock & roll radio stations and I remember one of them played Yngwie Malmsteen.  I was lucky to record it.  That one song totally changed my whole life.  I was really amazed how somebody can play that fast and clean.

From that day I started practicing almost 14 hrs a day, splitting it on 7hrs. for classical guitar and 7 hrs. for electric.  Took me about 1 month to get close to what he was playing and about 4 years to play most of the things he was playing. A friend of 

 mine got me involved in a project with two acoustic guitars and style like Al Di Meola, Paco De Lucia and John Mc Loughlin which helped me see everything from different aspect.  The Duo had a big success in Bulgaria considering that nobody had ever try to do the stuff we were doing.  By the same time I discovered guitar players such as Jason Becker (most brilliant to me) and Marty Friedman - two guitar players who always will make me want to play guitar.

I went in the army in 1989,two years wasting time, couldn't do anything about it. It's a mandatory thing.  When I was out everything was different, new government, new rules.  Seemed to me like nobody was interested in playing or producing music. Then I had decided that I should go to the US (it's a really long story how it happened).  I got in the US in 1995, since then I've played with several different local bands in Phoenix area when a friend of mine Amy (she is a pretty good guitar player) introduced me to Tom and Michael and we started working together.

Favorite bands:  Symphony X,Dream Theater, Megadeth, Cocophony, Yes, Deep Purple

Most Influenced By:  Jason Becker, Marty Friedman, Tony Macalpine, Steve Morse, Malmsteen, John McLoughlin

Equipment:  Ibanez guitars, Yamaha guitars, DigiTech preamps, Chameleon by Rocktron, Peavey cabinets

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