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Most people are fascinated to see someone play an instrument in an inspired way. We are moved by witnessing musical brilliance, and it was this notion that led me to purchase the GuitarTV domain 10 years ago.
Steve Vai
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Steve Vai
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: June 6
Actor
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Guitarist
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Carle Place
New York
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More quotes by Steve Vai
You know, there's times when you should play and there's times when you gotta hold back.
Steve Vai
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
If I remain true to what's in my heart, that's all the success I need.
Steve Vai
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
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
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
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
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
I think the thing that I got most from working with Frank Zappa is that I was able to see someone who completely independent. The most beautiful thing about Frank was that he was completely in the moment and present and eternally creative.
Steve Vai
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
I awake, I meditate, get the kids off to school, go to the gym, go to the Favored Nations office, and usually at around 1 pm I'm home and do music the rest of the day.
Steve Vai
I've never really heard anybody imitating anything of mine the way they do with Edward Van Halen's stuff.
Steve Vai
The cool thing about playing is that the more you do it, the better you get.
Steve Vai
The classical guitar has a dynamic to it unlike a regular acoustic guitar or an electric guitar. You know, there's times when you should play and there's times when you gotta hold back. It's an extremely dynamic instrument.
Steve Vai
I don't believe in 'greatest'. I believe in favorites.
Steve Vai
I loved the idea of recording. The idea of sound-on-sound-recording captured me as a young kid, and once I realized what it was I had an epiphany. Before I was even playing the guitar, I would create these lists of how I would record things and overdub them, like Led Zeppelin song, 'I could put this guitar on this track...' and so on.
Steve Vai
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
Possessing a healthy imagination is a necessary ingredient for creativity.
Steve Vai
Find what you're best at and exaggerate it.
Steve Vai
I've been approached many times to write all sorts of books about my past and my personal life. I get interest from people who want to do reality shows, and somebody just offered me a huge amount of money to write my spiritual memoirs. I'm just not interested.
Steve Vai