What has Steve Vai become?

General Music Discussion
#55

Making money as a musician is very interesting to me and tons of other folks who would love to do that - my life path led to stepping away from music pretty much entirely for a good chunk of time and working in software - and I am well compensated, I like the problem solving aspects, but it’s not like my life’s greatest passion.

I also have a fair amount of downtime working from home, and I write, practice and think about possible plans to launch a (maybe if I’m lucky) modestly lucrative social media presence along with some teaching if I go about it right.

I see a random set of guitarists get a few hundred thousand subs on youtube etc. - they probably do alright, but it’s obviously a constant hustle on multiple fronts getting there and maintaining an audience, thinking of ways to grow it like a business.

On the flip side, like you’re saying - I’ve seen that being moderately popular early on and performing isn’t going to cut it at all. One of my best friends is the lead guitarist for a metal/metalcore band (go check them out, they’re still somewhat active) that still gets 20k monthly listens on spotify, and another buddy of mine was in another metalcore band that was on Vans Warped Tour and gets 35k listeners on spotify monthly. Neither of them are making money on that right now AFAIK. Not sure what album sales looked like back in the day.

I probably won’t ever tour at this point, maybe I would have had a shot if I hand’t jumped ship from music and focused on career shit, but I still really would like to build a partial income and online presence from music, and maybe someday be able to transition to working part time in each. But I think it requires a lot of planning and luck, and a lot of thinking about approaches to draw an audience (and their money) beyond just performance.

I look at someone like @Troy as an example of outside the box approach, and I know for a fact it took him a long time to build up because I remember his youtube channel from when I was in high school and it was just him in front of a camera with long hair.

#56

Same here. When the music career tanked I went to the library and got some books out about good careers. Software was in the top 5 in each book I read so I thought “ah, I’ll do that”. Problem is…I’m not very smart and had no prior software experience so I had to work really hard to get into the industry. Great move though, I have zero regrets :slight_smile: The little bit of touring I did was all I needed to know it wasn’t for me lol!

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#57

It’s a good gig! I’ve been trying to get my friend to follow the same route since he asked me about IT, he’s currently in sales and hates it and is a smart guy and sufficiently neurotic to think of what might go wrong, sufficiently personable to understand how people might use something, and smart enough to learn music theory/composition in college (for a while anyway) so I figure he’s a pretty good abstract thinker - and day to day I’m pretty sure those components are all you need to do well in it. Plus I’m willing to, and enjoy teaching friends.

Not surprising a lot of forum members are in tech since from what I can tell since it’s a technically involved guitar forum - so kind of a magnet for nerds on the internet with enough disposable time and income to invest time in practicing and money in gear.

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#58

Eh, devil’s advocate, I’d rather have art made by people doing it for love than art made by people doing it because they think it’ll make them rich.

I’m not an artist that anyone should give the slightest insert-favorite-obscenity-here about, but I find it pretty liberating to be able to write the music I want to listen to, without having to worry about whether it’ll sell or get on the radio or get me a contract extension or an endorsement deal or anything, because I have a day job that allows me to do this for the sheer fact it makes me happy.

Maybe that isn’t the worst thing, you know?

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#59

I agree with you, tho I would say if you commission a painting you’ll get a much better one if you pay well vs asking for it for free, no matter how much the person loves painting.

#60

Seems to be a lot of software guys on here and in general I have come across lots of guitarists in my software career I wonder why that is.
Of course most of them are broken men, after giving up their guitar playing dreams to write code 9 to 5 but hey that’s life !

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#61

I agree totally, I have beyond enough time to practice and write music and I still enjoy my work enough and work from home permanently.

I’ve gotten about 7 songs written (though not all recorded) in the last year working on a solo album of my own.

My younger brother is also in software and drummer with an audio engineering degree and released two full length albums last year:

He plays out periodically, but beyond that, touring seems kinda awful and a huge time and money sink if you really just want to write music. You can promote it online, he just reaches out to various YouTube channels and gets featured - some have reached out to him.

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#62

I’m not sure the majority of great art over the years was really commercially viable in its time and typically artists are making commissioned work just to pay the bills while working on what they’re passionate about on the side.

I think the difference is you get a lot more people trying to be an artist or musician if there’s the allure of money, and that can translate into more people with latent talent coming out of the woodwork and pursuing it more fully. As well as extremely talented people who might take bigger risks instead making more commercially viable material. Kind of a two way street.

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#63

I think something pertinent to consider here is, when you talk about why Joe Satriani or Steve Vai are important, musically and as guitarists, then it’s Surfing with the Alien or Passion and Warfare that always come up first, and not Chickenfoot or Joe’s work with Mick Jaggar, or Eat 'Em and Smile or Vai’s work with Zappa, which Vai in particular is probably pretty notable in this respect in that he WAS given a lot of creative freedom in both projects. But Surfing and PAW were both passion projects, neither artist expected them to go anywhere, and I can’t speak to Vai’s headspace but with Satch he was pretty sure this was the last solo album he’d ever get to do so he dumped all of himself into it. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

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#64

Are you suggesting this isn’t Vai’s best work?

#65

I mean, it has some fun moments, but even aside from how poorly that intro has aged… no. :rofl:

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#66

Look at this gobshite quoting his own comments…

My girlfriend and I went to see Steve Vai on Friday. My girlfriend is a fan of Steve’s music and she has a little crush on him (his younger self at least). Going to the concert was her idea, and the tickets were a birthday present to her.

The band played a mix of material from Steve’s new album and some older tunes. I was a little surprised how little time Steve spent talking to the crowd and that he didn’t sing at all. I was also surprised by the variety of guitars he played: JEMs, PIAs, UVs, a JEM with singlecoils like a Strat and even an Ibanez semi-hollow guitar. He didn’t bring the Hydra on tour.

Honestly, I thought Steve was on form and the band was very tight. Despite having been a Vai fan since my early teens, I was honestly stunned by how unique and distinctive his playing is. His tone, his note choice and phrasing, everything. If you had recorded any ten seconds of his playing over the course of the gig and played them back, I’d have instantly known it was Vai. If anything sounded cliché it’s because people have been trying to imitate him for 35 years.

I saw Steve in 2005 on the Real Illusions tour and I met him and the band after the show. I was 16 years old. It was never going to be the same experience seeing him perform at this stage of my life, and we decided not to wait about after the show to try to meet Steve and the band.

As much as Vai’s music has meant to me, in particular when I was young, I have always struggled with the idea of adopting elements of his style and phrasing. I’ve always felt that much of his style was at odds with my other favourite players who are more recognizable influences in my playing. I’ve also felt that the exhibitionist style is a natural fit with his extroverted perfomance persona, but that those elements could feel forced or awkward from somebody who is much more introverted like myself. So much of the time I’ve just felt silly trying to imitate him.

Seeing him perform again has reminded me of how impactful his playing was on my younger self. It has made me wonder if I might now, as a more mature person with a better understanding of myself and my playing, be able to incorporate some elements of his style and phrasing into my playing in a way that’s recognizable, but more subtle. I still have my Ibanez JEM7VWH not fifteen feet away, after all.

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#67

Well now would be a great time cause there are some really great cover players you could dissect the phrasing which could help some.

But yeah I use to listen to him non stop, but his playing is just so overwhelming I only ever listened. I didn’t really feel like undertaking the task of trying to cover something so extremely intricate, and difficult.

#68

Well once you start studying his phrasing and style you find a lot of the same techniques and melodies, like with any player I guess.
I used to be the same but I don’t feel so overwhelmed anymore, but I suppose I’ve been studying his playing on and off for a long time.
My problem is my hands are too small to play some of his licks properly, he’s got some long fingers on that left hand of his.

#69

@Tom_Gilroy I’m jealous I was trying to get to the Bristol show but couldn’t.

Someone posted some of the Dublin show on YouTube by the way, its so cool:

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#70

I’d be happy if I could just get this bit down:

(That should be 1:47-1:50ish)

#71

Thank you so much for posting that. I’ve downloaded it in case it gets taken down from YouTube, I’ll be able to preserve this memory for the future.

Any favorite cover players you recommend?

#72

I would have figured the career in software would have broken them. I considered it at one point, but then decided that engineering SQL databases for e-commerce (the most in demand and lucrative at the time) would surely have lead to my end.

Not that things turned out for the better though. I work for a big corporation (bio) that I can’t stand, and drives me nuts on a daily basis. I’m in charge of people and it never ceases to amaze me how many times I have to tell a 63yr old man to stop surfing Grinder in plain sight. I also hustle in building guitar based electronics on the side, which used to be a way of decompressing but is starting to look less and less appealing to me this last couple of years, and I have been turning down work because my free time to do absolutely nothing has become more invaluable. Good thing I never started a family!

I wouldn’t even consider it mid life crisis, because that implies I’ll even make it to 80.

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#73

Yeh I get it man, I’m the same, after having a year off and doing nothing it’s been hard getting back to full-time working and having no free time. You really protect the free time you have it becomes the most valuable thing in your life if you don’t have kids.

I’m an advocate of the 4 day week, I don’t think humans were built to work 5 days a week 8 hours a day. When you really think about it, most professionals don’t need to work 40 hours a week anyway, it only gives us spare cash to spend on things we don’t need. This capitalist consumerist culture is gonna come crashing down when people realise that.

I can empathise with your managerial problems I was a team leader for a while and my older team members were a nightmare, one couldn’t stay awake the other wanted to kill me.

#74

My daughter got to meet Steve and his band in October. He’s such a kind and gracious individual. The Hydra is crazier in person. A 28lb behemoth.

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