Best 76 quotes of Steve Vai on MyQuotes

Steve Vai

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    Steve Vai

    Acting, at least for me, is very unreal, and when I'm doing it, I actually feel embarrassed.

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    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.

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    Steve Vai

    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.

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    Steve Vai

    Along with its enchanting and exquisite melodies, West Side Story has attitude and a tremendous amount of frenetic energy. It's emotional, theatrical and technical. It's everything.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Steve Vai

    As far as Deep Purple goes, I mean, they're iconic. Their contribution is unquantifiable, and as far as the politics involved in things like awards, you know, I don't think anything, because I know what they mean to me, and I know what they mean to the people who like them. Awards are very politically based.

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    Steve Vai

    Baby don't wake me, let me take you on an endless journey. We touch and the softest kiss explodes with lust. It's real and you can't deny the heat you feel. And if I die before I wake, baby that's all right.

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    Steve Vai

    Besides being a guitar player, I'm a big fan of the guitar. I love that damn instrument.

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    Steve Vai

    Criticism can be devastating. When push comes to shove, we are all very sensitive.

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    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.

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    Steve Vai

    I can tell you this: I'm an extremely passionate individual. I try to be careful how I display it because you never know how people are going to take it.

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    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.

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    Steve Vai

    I dedicated all the time I had to it. The 10 hour workout was just what I put in the magazine at the time, but for me it was every waking moment.

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    Steve Vai

    I didn't have any aspirations of becoming famous or successful; in fact I was scared to death of all that. I remember somebody once said that if a rock musician goes on tour, he goes insane. I was very impressionable and I carried this useless weight of fear around with me about going on tour, all because of this thing somebody said.

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    Steve Vai

    I don't believe in 'greatest'. I believe in favorites.

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    Steve Vai

    I don't think I approach my songs differently from other artists. You get a big picture of it, and you imagine the song and hear and feel it, and that big picture is like a snapshot, and it comes to you as fast as it takes to click a camera.

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    Steve Vai

    If I remain true to what's in my heart, that's all the success I need.

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    Steve Vai

    If you're feeling emotional when you're creating something, it'll sound that way.

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    Steve Vai

    If you want to be a virtuoso then you have to set your sights above me. You have to go beyond what I'm doing. And that's for you to figure out. Because if you can do that, then I'm going to be trying to go beyond you.

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    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

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    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.

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    Steve Vai

    I have a deep love for life and my fellow human beings. I try to understand everything that everybody does, even if it seems wrong to me.

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    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.

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    Steve Vai

    I know it is common nowadays for artists to start labels but this is a thoroughly constructed vehicle for inspired talent. This is a market that we've been living, breathing and eating for our entire lives - one where a huge void currently exists. Favored Nations is a long-term commitment.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Steve Vai

    In the physical universe, there are objects that include suns, planets, all life, and all matter in all dimensions. And then there is the space where all these things exist. That space is the vital element. For virtually every kid since 1968 who picked up a guitar to find his voice on the instrument, Jimmy Page has been the space that enables all our notes to be played.

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    Steve Vai

    I saw this trend happening with the proliferation of guitar clinics and schools. And I was approached to do a camp in the past, but I wanted to have a good enough idea because most of them are just about jamming and learning. I decided I wanted a theme for each camp.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Steve Vai

    It is only the most elite of elite musicians whose unconventional approach becomes convention.

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    Steve Vai

    It just happens in life, where you resonate with a particular artist. Or it can be a kind of food or a fashion - you discover it and it gives you a whole new lease on life.

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    Steve Vai

    It's always funny to me when people use the phrase 'Best guitar player in the world'. There are too many variables such as technique, uniqueness, emotional investment in the notes, etc. But If I had to pick one, it would be Tommy Emmanuel. Watching him perform can be a study in artistic and virtuosic human achievement.

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    Steve Vai

    It's hilarious, because my guitar has what's known as a tremolo bar or a whammy bar. And the whammy bar is probably the most alien thing on my guitar that could possibly relate to a classical guitar.

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    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.

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    Steve Vai

    I've always considered transcribing to be an invaluable tool in the development of one's musical ear and, over the years, I have spent countless glorious hours transcribing different kinds of music, either guitar-oriented or not.

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    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.

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    Steve Vai

    I've learned over the years that you're going to be most successful at the things you're most excited to do. Every artist has a special set of tools. When you really use those tools, and you make yourself feel really good about the product you create, I think you'll find an audience for it. I've been very fortunate in that respect.

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    Steve Vai

    I've never really heard anybody imitating anything of mine the way they do with Edward Van Halen's stuff.

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    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.

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    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.

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    Steve Vai

    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!'

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    Steve Vai

    I was always one of those guys who was a seeker after truth. I want to know what's going on.

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    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.

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    Steve Vai

    Lenny Breau was a genius - inspired and really loose. I loved how he used the guitar as an extension of his inner freedom, because, obviously, on the outside there were a lot of trainwrecks going on. But when you listen to him play, you hear what kind of guy he really is

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    Steve Vai

    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.

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    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.

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    Steve Vai

    My main calling in life is to seek and achieve spiritual balance, and to express that through my instrument. Everything else is here today, gone later today.