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What I look for in music is artistry, sincerity, and simplicity, and Tom Waits has all of that. I want to make a connection to the creator.

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
Connections
Waiting
Artistry
Music
Waits
Look
Toms
Looks
Sincerity
Make
Connection
Simplicity
Creator

More quotes by Steve Vai

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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.
Steve Vai
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If I remain true to what's in my heart, that's all the success I need.
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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The cool thing about playing is that the more you do it, the better you get.
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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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.
Steve Vai
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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.
Steve Vai
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I've never really heard anybody imitating anything of mine the way they do with Edward Van Halen's stuff.
Steve Vai
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When I was growing up, the blues did seem too simple to me. I was just a muso.
Steve Vai
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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.
Steve Vai
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So that's the challenge for me and that has always been the challenge - finding that melody, that riff, that thing that just lights me up and makes me feel like it's Christmas.
Steve Vai
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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 good solo is like a book. It will start out in a phrase, it will go on in paragraphs, and then it will have a great ending.
Steve Vai
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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.
Steve Vai
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Jeff Beck is compelled by his inner artistic drive to keep evolving the instrument. He'll use the whammy bar with the volume knob and the tone control all at the same time - creating harmonics that no human being should be able to hit.
Steve Vai
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I designed a guitar for Ibanez and then they started manufacturing it - it's called the Jem - it's 26 years old and I still play it. As a kid I liked Les Pauls and Strats, but they had limitations for the kind of playing I wanted to do.
Steve Vai
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When I was young, I wasn't a misfit or anything. I had friends in all the different social groups. But I had issues - just personal issues, insecurities and other things that had happened in my life.
Steve Vai
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My past is very interesting, and I treasure it, but to write about it, it's just not on my radar.
Steve Vai
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All musicians practice ear training constantly, whether or not they are cognizant of it. If, when listening to a piece of music, a musician is envisioning how to play it or is trying to play along, that musician is using his or her 'ear' - the understanding and recognition of musical elements - for guidance.
Steve Vai
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I'm a big fan of cultural music, and that's how I try to expand my playing, by listening to music that is not conventionally American.
Steve Vai