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You know, there's times when you should play and there's times when you gotta hold back.

Steve Vai

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Steve Vai
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: June 6
Actor
Composer
Guitarist
Musician
Record Producer
Songwriter
Carle Place
New York
Gotta
Hold
Times
Back
Play
Acoustics

More quotes by Steve Vai

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If you want to play something that you can't, you need to see and hear yourself doing it in your minds eye. It will start to happen
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I've never really heard anybody imitating anything of mine the way they do with Edward Van Halen's stuff.
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The blues scale was the first thing I learned. It's just a pentatonic scale with a flat seventh and a few notes that sound cool when you bend them. And because people have amalgamated the blues into this rock-blues scale, if you're using it, you better sound like a real authentic blues player.
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When you get down to it, the way that the music affects you individually is the most important thing, and when you let things like the location of a band get in the way or have an effect on your overview, you're cheating yourself out of a really good time.
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I was always one of those guys who was a seeker after truth. I want to know what's going on.
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If you want to play something that you hear, you need to listen with your mind's eye. You've heard of the mind's eye, right? Your mind has an ear too. It's a kind of listening, but it's not using your ears to listen. It's listening with your inner ear, and that's what you want to translate onto the guitar.
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I'm always pursuing knowledge I'm a seeker of spiritual equilibrium - and music is a big part of that.
Steve Vai
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A lot of those little things that I really like doing are just moments of cool articulation, just little moments of phrasing that probably go over everybody's head.
Steve Vai
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I loved the guitar, and I had all of this music in my head. My passion for the guitar and the ideas for what I could create musically were equal. So that's where I was.
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I wanted to be a composer before anything else. And my sister was listening to Led Zeppelin in the other room! When I heard that, it was a game-changer.
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As a musician, I look for certain things that stimulate me. And what I look for is something that's an evolution on a particular genre that I never heard before.
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It's very hard to come across as a passionate human being in print. People can't hear the inflections in your voice.
Steve Vai
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Ray and I do not draw salaries. Any profits will be re-invested into marketing the music we believe in.
Steve Vai
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I knew that I was going to have a life as a musician, because I always felt the pull. I don't remember ever having to make a choice.
Steve Vai
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Most of my records are very dense, composition-heavy, and there's bits of different kinds of music like an acoustic ballad, instrumental trio pieces, and vocal tracks.
Steve Vai
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It is only the most elite of elite musicians whose unconventional approach becomes convention.
Steve Vai
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I have an independent record label called Favored Nations on which I released an album by an artist called Johnny A, who plays an arch top Gibson through a Marshall, but the tone is all in his fingers.
Steve Vai
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When Frank Zappa would get an idea for a song, he just did it. He didn't wait for anybody or expect anyone to do it.
Steve Vai
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I think every artist subconsciously wants to evolve themselves. Sometimes they get stuck in ruts because of pop culture, peer pressure, stuff like that. But what excites me most is exploring my own musical insights and expanding upon them.
Steve Vai
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That's the thing about great artists: They find the thing that's most obvious to themselves, what's most conscious and natural, and they put it out there and the audience comes.
Steve Vai