I am not yet decided if I should be amazed or just used with Mr Vai being amazing…

So I just post this here and let you judge it. If you dare.

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We have this international music festival here, Golden Stag, which is a brand in our area. Well, it is a music festival oriented to interpretation, so I don’t give too much attention to it. However, each night there is a special guest and this year, the special guest in the final night was …the very Mr Steve Vai! Sweet!

I wanted to be there, really, but I had a very busy weekend that required my presence here. So, I watched his show on TV.

I must say that I was a bit disappointed at first because he was alone, no band, nothing, only himself, his guitar plus a backing one and 2 Legacy amps. That’s it. Ah, yes, and the backing tracks…

During the first song, I must tell you I was asking myself why did they bring him here because somehow this very festival had not the audience for his music, I was afraid of a cold response from the public. Man, I was wrong! After the first song, the public was already hot and when he started Tender surrender, I was amazed to see people reacted!

I can say I was again impressed by the strange music he makes, even if I knew the songs (well, I must admit I didn’t know the first one); Tender surrender was cool and Build the church has such a great and interesting theme, specific to Steve Vai…

The sad news for me it was that he only played 3 songs. That’s it! 3 songs! Glad I stayed home…

Now, my thoughts after this, and you be my guest and answer them if you want:

1. Why did he only play 3 songs? Could it be because the festival was not a rock one and they tried not to piss off the public?
2. Why didn’t he bring the band? Could it be because he wanted just to test the market? If I think about the 3 songs above, it may be so, testing the audience, to see if he has a public here. Hmm, but he was here in Romania before, playing a full concert…Maybe this was all he could do for the money he got…
3. Does Steve Vai ever miss a note?
4. If Steve Vai ever misses a note, can you actually tell that? I mean he could integrate it immediately into something else, I guess that you couldn’t even tell…

What’s you take on that?

By the way, here’s a piece of the show in Brasov, tonight:

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From one thing to another, from Dave Weiner’s channel on YoutTube (Got Riffs?), from his Twitter account and site, from Slipknot and John Petrucci, I’ve reached this video of Steve Vai.

I have also loved the way Steve Vai knows to make a show, beyond the music which is great and at the same time, a bit too much for the “regular” listener, it’s more like music for musicians.

Steve Vai is such a great entertainer beside being a wonderful musician, the show brings the music closer to people.

So watch this video and enjoy the show!

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A very interesting thing I didn’t know about: the Xavian scale, Steve Vai’s “own” scale. Well, did you know about that? A very interesting topic that I have never thought about. Really, it shows you how deeply involved in his music Steve Vai really is.

For me, all those scales out there contains some of the same 12 notes in a “standard” chromatic scale and honestly I have never thought about another way of dividing the space between 2 octaves. Well, I guess somebody else did…

Think about taking this available “space” and divide it in another number of equal intervals, not in 12 as we commonly know. Divide it in 10 spaces, or in 8, or in 9, or in 20 spaces…whatever… The result? Well, you could name it “another chromatic scale”, I guess. This is exactly what Steve Vai did: took this space and divided it in 16 equal spaces and then, by experimenting a lot, he took 10 notes out of 16 and built his “own scale”, Xavian. Speaking about playing like Steve Vai…

Of course, you won’t be able to do this with a regular guitar, no matter how good you are, since it is not built for this. Vai couldn’t do it either so he asked Steve Ripley to build such a 16 intervals guitar for him. He also has a 24 intervals guitar…

Seems that Deep down into the pain song is the only record where he actually used the Xavian scale. Listen closely the end of the song. I know that Steve Vai uses strange modes all over his music, but his own scale with notes outside the known Universe, man, that’s weird…

What do you think about this? Read more about this here and come back and comment, I would like to know your thoughts on this!!

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