Steve Vai For the Love of God ascending lick

General Music Discussion
#21

Your so right about trying to figure out what was intended. Also this lick - the more I listen to the original the more I can here Vai prioritized feel/effect over technical perfection (in this instance)…and I don’t think it could be better - the performance speaks. …there is lot’s of interview material out there about his mindset leading up to this take.

I like your run (also your hand sync is really tight - how long did it take you to feel like your hand sync was reliable?). There are a lot of 3nps phrases (?cells, ?units) that I have under my fingers but never put them together for this. Thanks so much for posting. I think I will add one chromatic note to this at the end on the high E string - F# G G# A A (bend to B). I’m not sure if Vai does this but I just feel it on my own.

#22

Yeah, I’d never made any real, concentrated attempt to learn this song, a couple phrases here and there and that arpeggio figure, but my picking has historically been pretty bad so whenever I did happen to look at a tab of this, I always skipped over that picking run because what’s the point?

Because of that, I’d always just contented myself to listen to it as a blur of notes, without trying to think or listen critically about what the actual pitches are (and, given the heavy palm muting, that’s kind of the intended effect anyway, I think).

So, slowing it down, really trying to listen to pitches, and then looking at some of those transcriptions, I’m actually kind of surprised how much chromaticism is going on here, there’s a LOT of 4-note-per-string chromatic bits, as that seems to be half of the ascending looped pattern he’s playing through. that’s something I never really associated wit Vai’s playing - more of a Vernon Reid thing, really, so I just assumed this part was an obnoxiously perfectly executed E minor scale run.

I suspect the chromaticism is added in a way that vastly simplifies the picking hand, if I’ve learned anything as a member of this site, lol. It’s just a little surprising to come back to this and kind of see what’s happening under the skin, a bit, with a better tool kit to analyze it with.

#23

Here’s what I put for the studio version in the Vai Guitar Anthology, published by Hal Leonard last year. There isn’t any real sign of chromaticism and he’s picking 30 notes per measure, not 32nds. The last two E notes are actually F, but that sounds kind of wrong and probably not intended. I’m not entirely sure those were on the 3rd string and not the 2nd string. F# is probably a better guess if he switched to the B string there.

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Live version in OP:

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#24

These are fun to work through. If anything I’ve found some great turn around patterns to burn into my own playing point.

What is your transcription background?

#25

Are you the same Bakerman that did all those Dream Theater/ John Petrucci transcriptions years ago?

#26

Started transcribing in the '90s, got some gigs (Guitar One, Hal Leonard, Alfred/WB) around 2003-2005, still doing mostly HL work. I transcribed everything in the Vai anthology mentioned above BTW.

Spooky_tom: Yes

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#27

I recognised the name from the Petrucci forum:-) You helped me with some Per Nilsson transcriptions at one point. I recently got some minor transcriptions job so I might hit you up for some advice if needed:-) I also got some tips from Levy Clay.

Nice to see you on this forum:-)