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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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Steve Vai
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: June 6
Actor
Composer
Guitarist
Musician
Record Producer
Songwriter
Carle Place
New York
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Years
Started
Jem
Called
Manufacturing
Kids
Limitations
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More quotes by 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 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
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 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
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 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
When I was growing up, the blues did seem too simple to me. I was just a muso.
Steve Vai
I was always one of those guys who was a seeker after truth. I want to know what's going on.
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
I've never really heard anybody imitating anything of mine the way they do with Edward Van Halen's stuff.
Steve Vai
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
Reps once took chances on art, History's most treasured musicians were believed in and cultivated to reach their potential. Today, it would be difficult for those musicians to get deals.
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
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
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
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
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
My past is very interesting, and I treasure it, but to write about it, it's just not on my radar.
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
