I am originally from Guayaquil Ecuador. I was born in a family of musicians, so I was taught to play piano before I could even walk. I grew up listening to Beatles, Dire Straits, Queen, Pink Floyd, Allan Parson’s, America and several other classic rock bands that my father used to listen to. At age 12 I began listening to heavy metal, and was fascinated by the electric guitar, the guitarist that inspired me to pick up the instrument was Slash from Guns n’ Roses. Till this day I believe his solos are some of the most powerful and amazing I have heard. Later on I started listening to Vai, Malmsteen, Petrucci and other amazing guitar players, and started incorporating fast shredding techniques into my playing. In 2000 I joined the well known thrash metal band Demolicion from Guayaquil and played with them for about a year, till I decided to move to the U.S. Besides making working on my own music, I am currently the guitarist and producer of MenO (www.soundclick.com/meno), a project started by the incredibly talented singer/songwriter Andres Mena (my brother), which has the sound of the great old music that we grew up listening to. I heard about the contest because I am currently a guitar instructor at www.guitarmasterclass.net and there was a forum post started by a student about this Dean Contest, me and other instructors decided to enter for fun. Hope you like what you hear.