Extraordinaire Steve Vai has opined on the difference between composing and shredding, saying the former “never wears thin” because “melody is infinite”.
Speaking on the latest episode of Kip Winger’s podcast, Vai reflects on his musical journey, recalling the moment he recognised composing for what it was.
“If I was to outline the parallel universes of rock music and classical music, compositional music, in my life, it would sound something like this, ” Vai began. “I think it was on my sixth birthday and my mom got me a little ‘spin it’ organ. I remember hitting a note and recognising the notes go higher to the right, and they go lower to the left. It was right at that moment, I had this sort of epiphany.”
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“At that moment, there were two thoughts that came to me. One of them was, ‘This is music.’ I could see music, knowing that, ‘Oh, I see this is how it works’ and ‘Oh, that’s music…’ It was an instinctive feeling that the creation of music was infinite, and you have all of these colours and things at your disposal, you can do anything you want.”
Prompted on the difference between -wielding Steve Vai and a composing Steve Vai, the musician replied: “I have never really given it much thought, because I usually adjust to the situation. If I’m sitting in with the band, and if I have a on, and I’m improvising, there’s a compositional element to that.”
“It’s changed through the years. At one point, when you’re a developing musician, at least for me, it was all about, ‘Okay, these scales work, and I can play this scale, and I practised it so much, boy, I can play it fast.’ but that gets tired, ” he added. “You become just a machine, and it wears thin on you, no matter who you are. But melody never wears thin, and it’s infinite.”
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“There’s times, in my earlier days, where melody occasionally would just come out, and I’d never really recognised that. Usually it was, ‘This is the blues scale. It’s got to work.’ But that was when I was a kid. Then, as things progressed, and my interest in compositional music improved – compositional music, or rock music; they serve a purpose. And that purpose is what are you hearing.”
Vai continued: “That’s when the best stuff comes out, when I just shut up, and I listen. Anybody that’s in the moment of inspiration, you back out, you get out of the way. And when I don’t get out of the way, then I’m intellectualising what I’m doing or I’m exercising my hand memory, and I do that too. I’m not an inspired person all the time.”
1 “If you’re in a band you should always be in your favorite band” Hotline TNT on bringing shoegaze to a new generationThe legendary ist on Game Of Thrones, The Great British Bake Off, and almost jamming with the Foo Fighters in a haunted house.
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While thousands of bands and musicians have been forced to cancel or postpone tours in the face of COVID-19, Steve Vai counts himself as one of the lucky ones – he had no live dates on the books for 2020. However, the global pandemic did throw a rather sizeable wrench into an elaborate recording project he had been planning.
“I was going to be in Europe for four weeks recording my orchestra music with the Metropole Orchestra in Holland and the Aarhus Denmark Radio Symphony, ” the ist says. “It was supposed to kick off the last week of May and go all the way through June. It’s about four hours of orchestra music that I have that I haven’t released yet. It’s been performed, and some of the compositions are orchestrations of songs like
And other selections from my catalogue. Probably about two-thirds of it is pretty intense, complex and dense, contemporary orchestra music. That I had to postpone. It’s fine – it’s just what is.”
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Speaking from his Los Angeles home, Vai reports that the ongoing lockdown hasn’t affected his day-to-day life to any great extent. “I’m fortunate. I haven’t gotten sick, at least not that I know of, ” he says. “For me, it’s relatively business as usual because I live in my studio anyway. I roll with the punches and I don’t even feel them as punches.
“I know that there’s a lot of challenges for people, both health-wise and economically, ” he continues, “but I also see a lot of people are thriving as a result of COVID in various ways. Some have started new businesses, or they’ve found different types of jobs. Some have found different ways of doing their job. And a lot of people have found out things about living with their family that they never realised. There are advantages – you just have to look for them.”
“I would not feel comfortable recording these pieces remotely. These works are very specific and they would require me to be there. But you know, here’s the thing: If you navigate through any challenge when it arises, you’ll have the coping mechanisms to deal with it, and you’ll also have opportunities for very solution-based, move-forward plans. If you’re in a state of panic and fear, you’re going to miss those opportunities because you’ll be looking for other things. You’ll be looking for fearful things.
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“That’s the interesting thing about something like COVID-19. The fear that it can elicit in a person is insidious and they don’t even realise it. They can find themselves seeking out bad news. If all you’re reading is bad news, then that’s going to colour your perspective of everything you’re doing. I look for good news and I find it.”
“Sure. It’s become the new norm. One of the things that was really nice is how the online community of musicians really came together with Zoom meetings. I’ve done a lot of Zoom-type meetings with various friends and people. For many years I wanted to do these two live streams, one of them based on my knowledge and experience as a player – I call that
. Another one is to discuss more esoteric topics and the kind of spirituality I’ve studied in my life. Those episodes are called
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“I hadn’t done it in the past because I never felt qualified, or maybe it just didn’t feel right at the time. I wanted to do it, though. Finally, I got a call from my media team, and they said, ‘Steve, we’re in lockdown and people are starting to do live streams. Maybe it’s a good time for you to consider that’.
. I did seven weeks of that and then I got clobbered with work that I wanted to get done, so I’ve discontinued them for now. The response was really great, and it all came about as a result of the lockdown. It’s been another way for me to communicate with people who are interested in what I do or what I have to say.”
“That was fantastic. I mean, obviously musicians are going to be off the road the rest of this year. I don’t see any way that shows can happen, but artists are finding ways to reach people. The music community is like a family. Yes, there’s squabbling and competition like any family, but there’s a community, especially among the munity. We need each other and we want each other to succeed. For a lot of musicians, this is a tough time. Many of them are suffering, the ones that live hand to mouth, gig to gig.
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“But like I had said before, if you’re in a situation like that and you decide that you prefer to look for solutions optimistically, then you will find them. They’re on your radar. People don’t realise what they’re looking for with their inner intention. If they’re in a state of confusion, panic, fear, even frustration about their career and about making ends meet and stuff like that, then that’s going to be what they’re looking at, and the solutions are not going to be as readily in their sight.”
Have you shifted your focus to some other recording projects that were maybe on the back burner, things you can do at home?
“Absolutely. I’ve started working on some other things… It’s difficult for me to talk about them because my plans change. Once I let something out that I’m doing, people expect it right away. So I should preface this with, I don’t know what’s going to happen. My original plan was to record three trio-based instrumental records that have no overdubs. One record was going to be all clean tones. The second one was going to be my normal dirty tone. The third one was going to be this tuned-down eight-string stuff, like the heaviest of stuff I could possibly dream of. That was one project and I laid it all out, but then other things got in the way.
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, and that’s for the clean records. It’s on YouTube. It’s got this cool technique I was fooling around
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