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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

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Steve Vai
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: June 6
Actor
Composer
Guitarist
Musician
Record Producer
Songwriter
Carle Place
New York
Thing
Artists
Conscious
Audience
Natural
Comes
Artist
Find
Great
Obvious

More quotes by Steve Vai

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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
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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
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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'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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You know, there's times when you should play and there's times when you gotta hold back.
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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I was a kid, 12 or something, when the Partridge Family was big on TV. I liked the curly cord running from the bass to the amps, which were real fancy. That cord looked so cool. I said, 'Wow! I gotta play something like that!'
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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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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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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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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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 don't believe in 'greatest'. I believe in favorites.
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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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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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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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
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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
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It is only the most elite of elite musicians whose unconventional approach becomes convention.
Steve Vai
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Find what you're best at and exaggerate it.
Steve Vai