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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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Steve Vai
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: June 6
Actor
Composer
Guitarist
Musician
Record Producer
Songwriter
Carle Place
New York
Feel
Findings
Feels
Finding
Thing
Challenge
Always
Guitar
Like
Challenges
Riff
Makes
Lights
Light
Melody
Music
Christmas
More quotes by Steve Vai
It is only the most elite of elite musicians whose unconventional approach becomes convention.
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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.
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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
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
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.
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.
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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
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
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
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
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 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
I was about seven or eight years old when I first heard West Side Story, and it had a huge impact on me. If you look at the elements of that record, it contains many of the things I enjoy doing today.
Steve Vai
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
Steve Vai
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.
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
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
You know, there's times when you should play and there's times when you gotta hold back.
Steve Vai
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
I could never overstate the importance of a musician's need to develop his or her ear. Actually, I believe that developing a good 'inner ear' - the art of being able to decipher musical components solely through listening - is the most important element in becoming a good musician.
Steve Vai
