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<\/p>\nPlaying melodically and \u201cshredding\u201d are each in their own way highly valued qualities in music, especially in the genre of hard rock. But those two qualities \u2013 crafting an accessible, memorable melody and displaying formidable instrumental pyrotechnics \u2013 come together only in the rarest cases. Exhibit A for melodic shredding is the music of Steve Vai. A guitar virtuoso, New York-born Vai has applied his prodigious talents as guitarist, composer, arranger, songwriter, instrument designer and band leader. He has released a dozen solo albums starting with his 1984 debut Flex-Able<\/i> right through his recent work: an archival release and collaboration with old friend Johnny Sambretto, 2023\u2019s Vai\/Gash<\/i>, and an album of great new music, 2022\u2019s Inviolate<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Vai\u2019s career has also included high-profile examples of him lending his skills to some of the biggest names in rock. He\u2019s toured as lead guitarist with Frank Zappa, Alcatrazz, David Lee Roth, Whitesnake and others, and has worked in the studio with everyone from Ozzy Osbourne to Mary J. Blige to Alice Cooper to Spinal Tap. Ahead of a concert tour with lifelong friend and fellow shredder Joe Satriani, he spoke with me about the what he\u2019s learned from other musicians, as well as reflecting on the relationships between emotion and music, between feel and technique.<\/p>\n
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. A much shorter edit of this interview appeared previously in <\/i>Rock On Magazine<\/i>.<\/p>\n
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Your songs have always been about much more than serving as a sonic canvas for a solo; the music explores a wide variety of emotional textures as well. From where do you draw the emotional content that shows up in your music?<\/b><\/p>\n
I draw my emotional investment in the music similar to the way anybody else would. You have to enter an emotional state of mind in order for it to authentically flow into whatever you\u2019re doing: a melody, an intensity, a groove. The thing that I always focus on is melody.<\/p>\n
I love shredding. I love going off into the most obtuse, abstract kind of performance I could muster. And where that comes from is desire: It\u2019s an impulse to create, and everybody has that. It\u2019s finding the fearlessness to do what you want to do, what your impulses are dictating. And the emotional content is always reflected in the depth of the ability of the music\u2019s creator to go into an emotional state of mind.<\/p>\n
Those emotions could be positive or negative, right? <\/b><\/p>\n
Yeah; you can very easily see that in popular music. You know what\u2019s on people\u2019s minds: sex, heartbreak, all these kinds of things. And that\u2019s fine. Many people feel that expressing their pain in their music \u2013 their emotional pain, is a cathartic way of dissolving it. But I don\u2019t buy that at all. I think that whatever state of mind you enter into, you create more of. So beware how you feel when you\u2019re writing and performing. You have to make a choice.<\/p>\n
Frankly, I don\u2019t have a lot of suffering in my life, so my songs don\u2019t reflect that. They reflect other things. I do have challenges<\/i>, and there\u2019s an emotional element to those challenges, and that flows into the music. How you feel should flow into what you\u2019re doing, and you are in control. You\u2019re the only one in control of the quality of the emotional investment you want to make in your creations. So that\u2019s your responsibility. You could do whatever you want, but whatever you do, you\u2019re creating more of that for yourself.<\/p>\n
So if I go back and play a song that I may have written 40 years ago that has a lot of angst in it, in order for me to perform that song effectively and authentically, I would have to feel angst-ridden. I choose not to do that.<\/p>\n
So you just don\u2019t perform those songs? <\/b><\/p>\n
No, I don\u2019t perform them. But I don\u2019t have many of them. My songs are centered more around silliness, and funny, quirky, loving, very intense joy. There\u2019s a desire to create melodies that satisfy, that are fulfilling and satisfying. There\u2019s a difference between the feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction and angst. And it\u2019s always your choice. So I pull my emotional content from the same place everybody else does: their intentions.<\/p>\n
The melodic qualities \u2013 the \u201cheart\u201d of your works, if you will \u2013 are perfectly balanced with technical brilliance, the \u201chead\u201d part of the music. Does that balance come naturally?<\/b><\/p>\n
In the field that I function in, my technical abilities on the guitar are not really extraordinary [ed. note: oh yes they are!]<\/i>. It\u2019s what I play, it\u2019s how I apply my technique that creates the voice. So I love melody, and I really<\/i> love phrasing. And the guitar is the best instrument in the world to create phrasing, because the dynamics of it are extraordinary. You can color the sound. You pick it, you bend it, you hit it hard. All these incredible variations: pull-offs, hammers, anything that anybody does, they\u2019re all available. And I like using those things in the melody as opposed to just, \u201cHere\u2019s a melody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s take an example: \u201cCall it Sleep\u201d from Flex-Able<\/i>, because there are a vast amount of dynamics and phrasing in the guitar part. If you listen, there\u2019s so much that I love, using to get the melody to speak a certain way: all the articulations, dynamics. These are all part of the tools that you have to shape a melody to make it more effective.<\/p>\n
An effective melody has to speak to somebody similar to the way a human voice speaks. When I speak to you, I use inflections, I use space, I use commas, I use periods and exclamation marks and question marks. These are all tools that we use to get our communication across. So the same thing holds true when you\u2019re writing a melody. If I didn\u2019t use all those things, and I just sat and talked to you like this [speaks in measured monotone] you\u2019d get bored really quick! So I try to apply that to melodies.<\/p>\n