Orianthi Aims to Inspire New Generation of Female Guitarists

Orianthi has been lucky enough to garner the attention of some of her guitar heroes. "Having the support of Santana and Steve Vai has made me just really keep at it," she tells Spinner. Now she's trying to pay that help forward by inspiring her growing number of fans. "I always try to reply to as many e-mails as I can, the messages that I get," she says.

Her goal is to create a new generation of guitarists, especially female ones. "I want to inspire a lot more guitar players, especially girls to keep at it, to want to pick it up because it's a lot of fun," she says. "There aren't too many female guitar players out there. If you love it as much as the guys do then just keep at it."

Thanks to modern technology and the success of her 'According to You' video, she's getting the chance to interact with a lot of her admirers. Are there any messages she's received that really stand out? "They're usually mostly all the same, like, 'Instead of getting something else for Christmas I'm asking for a guitar,'" she says. "That's really awesome, getting messages like that. I'm at NAMM right now and having my PRS [Paul Reid Smith guitar] model come out, a lot of kids have written to me on Twitter and said, 'We want to get your guitar and be able to learn your stuff.'"

Orianthi says she can definitely still relate to that desire to learn. "That's typical, because I just remember being a kid and looking up to all these guitar players. Getting messages back, getting support back, meant so much to me," she says. "It made my day, actually made my week, getting an e-mail from Steve. Being able to do that is just amazing."

As someone who wants to inspire new guitarists, Orianthi also had an amazing vehicle, being in the Michael Jackson 'This Is It' film. Given how dedicated his fans were, does she hear from them now? "Yeah, definitely," she says. "I get a lot of e-mails from his fans that have seen the movie or hear my stuff and they want to play guitar too, so that means a lot."