Top 92 Quotes & Sayings by Steve Vai - Page 2

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.

The tone is in your fingers, not in your amp or effects.

Ray and I do not draw salaries. Any profits will be re-invested into marketing the music we believe in.

The guitar is the coolest instrument in the world.

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

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.

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.

I like my voice, but I can't deliver as much as I wish I could.

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.

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.

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.

Find what you're best at and exaggerate it.

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.

There's very notable dynamics in all of the collaborations I've done. It's hard to say if one is more important than the other, but if I had to think of all situations and point to one band that I enjoyed most it would be when I was eight years old. I had a band with my little sister and the kid across the street. We sat around all day playing music and it was bliss. I didn't have any expectations or do it for anyone or worry about selling an album. That was really my favorite band. We were called Hot Chocolate.

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.

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.

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

The only thing that's holding you back, is the way you're thinking.

... you watch Jimi Hendrix literally reinvent the instrument. He was playing from somewhere else. He was really a kind of hybrid, and I can't even begin to imagine where he came from

The level of achievement that we have at anything, is a reflection, of how well, we were able to focus on it. Because the only thing that's holding you back, is the way you're thinking.

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.

Critisism is just reflection of the person that speaking

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.

There is still a very strong subculture of people who want to do great things on an instrument, and who are stimulated by hearing people who can. That's reassuring. But it's gonna take a person - and I don't know who this is - to come along and reinvent the guitar as a virtuosic instrument in a completely different realm than any of us have done, or anybody else in the past. That's the clincher. Maybe that will happen and maybe it won't.

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.

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

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.

Make an exercise out of everything you can’t do.

We may be human, but we're still animals.

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.

The cool thing about playing is that the more you do it, the better you get.

Play slow and perfect - that’s the way to becoming a virtuoso.