Thought this was interesting. He says he mainly uses finger movement.
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Cool clip. Steve definitely does use finger movement, along with all the other ingredients. In this brief example alone, he’s switching between fingers and wrist, and blends of the two. Wrist seems to take over when he’s going faster here, but who can say if that was always the case. These players evolve.
It’s complicated out there!
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Here is a video that closes up on his hand playing 1nps slow chord arepggios
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It just goes to show how versatile this man is.
One of my favourite runs by him is this segment from this song in particular, starting at 1:40
In this past, I thought of Vai as this very flowery weird noodley guitar player, but damn, his picking is s c a r y
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6m10s, some really amazing picking happening. I also recall Steve doing some really fast picking stuff on acoustic on his demo that he sent to Frank.
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I think that was a relatively recent evolution of his - early 2000s, maybe, maybe around the time of Ultra Zone, where he started to get more overtly “quirky” in his phrasing. On the albums where he really first made his name, there’s some pretty scary alternate picking. That fast run from he end of the main solo in For The Love of God, for example.
Which, speaking of, I’d be curious to see a good breakdown of his picking approach to that. The transcriptions I’ve seen have him occasionally repeating a picked note here and there, and knowing what I know now I bet there’s a method to his madness…
This is most likely my all time favorite Vai moment. Amazing playing, inspired and moving. I remember him stating in interviews that solo was recorded in 3 or 4 different sessions, hence the differences in tone. Regarding his picking chops, I believe he used to pick every note in much of the stuff Zappa wrote during his days with band, like Mogio and even Black Page.
Wow, the 5ths licks at the ending cadenza…Generally speaking, it’s amazing how he uses everything he has in his vast vocabulary towards an aesthetic end, an expressive statement. That’s the hands of a virtuoso guided by the mind of a composer. Frank would be proud.
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check this out
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