It’s not uncommon for a musician to record more work than they release. In my case, I have a digital ocean of snippets in various degrees of completion. Some are leftovers from assorted project recording sessions, projects that were never completed, sound check jams, demo snippets, etc.
There are enough lonely unreleased notes in my world to fill an “infinity shelf.” VaiTunes are tracks that are culled from this melodic abyss, brushed off, sometimes severely hosed down, and released as digital singles.
These tracks may be specific to a particular project that has never had the chance to be a completed big picture, but now, with the advent of all this digital technology and distribution, it’s possible to release a variety of tracks from a potential project without having to complete the whole project itself. Eventually, if there is enough tracks completed that fall into a precise endeavor, perhaps they will be compiled and released as a cohesive CD. In any event, it’s a good way to release a constant stream of music.
Although the plan is to continue to create whole, full-bodied CD releases, VaiTunes can serve as temporary pacifiers for some delectable melodies to be sucked through the ears and absorbed into the soul.
Release Date: November 30, 2017
Produced by: Steve Vai
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“Hey Folks, Steve here…
It’s been a while since I release a Vaitunes and recently I was digging through the infinity shelf and found one of perhaps 600 sound check jams that we recorded. Don’t know why I picked this one but… It was a 20 minute impromptu blues jam but I only used the first 4 and half minutes or so and used a lot of room mics for a little different experience. The track is called “Cupid and his Lasers”, and not sure where that came from either. Check it out, hope you enjoy.”
Release Date: November 12, 2015
Produced by: Steve Vai
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“Flash Mob” is an epic guitar anthem created and recorded by Steve Vai & The Vai Academy Army.
The Vai Academy Army is made up of the 6-, 7- and 8-string guitar players who attended Vai’s guitar camp, Vai Academy — Song Evolution Camp, in 2014. Recorded as part of the camp held at the Gideon Putnam Resort in Saratoga Springs, New York, “Flash Mob” features a bounty of licks and guitar solos by 155 campers that Vai skillfully mixed into one track.
The song was captured in a room set up as a giant recording studio with each of the campers playing through little practice amps. The idea for the composition came to Vai after seeing a YouTube clip of a phenomenon known as a “Flash Mob,” when a group of people plan a performance in a large public place to an unsuspecting crowd.
All proceeds from the download will be donated to The Make A Noise Foundation.
Release Date: December 18, 1999
Produced by: Steve Vai
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This track was spontaneously born at soundcheck on December 18, 1999. While on tour we usually have soundcheck around 4 pm. The band arrives, goes through all their gear, balances their monitor mix, etc. We have this adventurous policy that when I show up for soundcheck I walk-on the stage, am handed a hot guitar, I start playing and we record whatever comes out. On this occasion I had been fooling around with the chord changes earlier in the day and when I got on the stage I told the band the changes and we blasted into the track. This was the only performance and recording of this song and what you hear is what came out of us that day, warts and all….
Release Date: April 6, 2011
Produced by: Steve Vai
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One day, I built this patch using an Eventide H300 Harmonizer. After playing through the sound for 10 seconds or so, I realized I should document what was flowing through my fingers and out of the amp. It was easy and enjoyable to just play simple stuff and have this wonderful flurry of shimmery overtones emanate from each note. I quickly built a little percussion track and just went for it. I wasn’t sure what I was going to play, but I knew it was all going to work. You just get that feeling, and you know you gotta act quickly. I was so looking forward to what the next few minutes were going to bring. I buried my head in the sound and slipped into a state of melodic meditation. I literally thought I played only for a few minutes, but it was more than nine! I thought that if I ever wanted to release this track, it would have to be edited. But the other day when looking for a VaiTune’s selection, I came across this track and fell back in love with it. The track is close to 20 years old, and I had totally forgotten about it. I had listened back to it only once after I recorded it…
Release Date: November 30, 2010
Written, Arranged and Produced by Surinder Sandu
Surinder Sandhu is an extraordinary Sarangi player. The Sarangi is a bowed, short-necked string instrument of India. It sounds a bit like a sitar from a rougher neighborhood. Suinder has established himself as a highly proficient and respected composer and performer of this instrument. He put together a wonder exotic ensemble called “The Saurang Orchestra.” Check out his website at www.suindersandu.com. Back in 2002 he approached me to contribute to some of his recordings. Amirah is one of the little jewels that resulted. The track is unlike any other VaiTunes in that it is composed and recorded by a musician steeped in authentic cultural Indian music. The entire melodic structure and atmosphere this track sets up is quite genuine. As VaiTunes is a veritable potpourri of tracks from different projects, I thought it would be a nice change from what could be expected…
Release Date: August 22, 2010
Written, Arranged and Produced by Steve Vai
Every now and then I get a new audio processor. I pump my guitar through it and fiddle about until something I think is interesting comes out. I was experimenting with a TC Electronic® G-force and I wrote this bizarre patch. The way it responded to the audio of the guitar compelled me to play a particular way and before I knew it this piece started to evolve. Before I could forget what I was doing I whammed the guitar part down onto tape and then layered it with some techno percussion loops, samples, and some backwards, upside-down, heavily processed chanting monks. For a while I called the track “Monks on Dope,” but then the atmosphere of the track started to remind me of the way church incense smelled so I named the song “The Burning Bush” (all due respect of course.)
Release Date: July 14, 2010
Written, Arranged and Produced by Steve Vai
Every now and then I pick up an instrument and something sweet comes out. I love when that happens and am very graceful for it. I believe it happens at times for all of us in our perspective fields? I was lucky to have a little take deck around to capture this riff when it first dropped off my fingers. I can’t even remember when that was, perhaps in the 1980′s? This little jewel was buried on the infinity shelf for a while and then one day, sometime in the 1990′s, I came across it and thought, “Hmmm, I could just rip this song out in a day” and that’s about how long it took me to complete the writing, recording and mixing of the whole thing. Then the finished product sat on the shelf for another decade or so only not to show its festooned little note heads through these VaiTunes releases. When weighing my catalog of work, a relatively small percentage has vocals sung by me. As a result of this rarity, every vocal take I do is an opportunity to explore without any real pressure. Sometimes I push very hard and try to sound as though I’ve been gargling with Drano®, but on this song I decided to get very close to the microphone and give a delicate and intimate vocal offering. The song was written about a special person whom I love dearly and has been in my life since I was about 3 years old. The song is also about finding inner peace. Perhaps we all have a secret garden we yearn to dwell in.
Release Date: June 11, 2010
Written, Arranged and Produced by Steve Vai
I had just finished the Sex and Religion tour and was considering my next record. I always get ideas when I go running so I headed for the Hollywood Hills and sure enough I was flooded with inspiration. At that time I had already started the planning stages for what was to become Fire Garden but I knew it was going to be a huge undertaking and I was pining for a simple project that had some stripped down, kick-ass guitar tracks. During that run in the hills I decided I would record an instrumental trio EP and while I was running I came up with the idea for one of the first songs, which later turned out to be “Kill The Guy With the Ball”. I started working on the track the moment I returned to the studio from the run in the hills. The song was broken down into three parts. The first part ended up being a piece called “Speed”, the second part “Kill the Guy With the Ball” and the third part “The God Eaters”. I decided not to release “Speed” and eventually sent this track to the late Munetaka Higuchi, who was the drummer for the Japanese metal band Loudness. Although Deen Castronovo was the original drummer on this track, Munetaka re-did the drums with Dream Castle – for the album Free World [1997]. When I was looking for tracks to fill Archives Vol. 3, I took the original version of “Speed” with Deen on drums, spiffed up the guitar track and released it under the name “Speeding.” In the winter of 2010 I received a license request from Guitar Hero for this track. As much of a documentarian and audio pack rat that I am, we could not find the completed multi track masters for this track. I believe I may have inadvertently sent them to Sony with the other Alien Love Secrets masters. I had to actually re-record the guitars because all we could find was the drums and some rhythm tracks. I changed the form a bit and here it is, relatively similar to the version that came out on Archives Vol. 3, but different enough. This song is about traveling so fast that it feels as though your lips are being peeled back around the top of your head. Just like in this picture here.
Release Date: May 04, 2010
Written, Arranged and Produced by Steve Vai
One of my favorite experiences while on tour is when I first walk into soundcheck. We have a policy that by the time I get there the band has done their soundcheck and are ready to play. Before we do our final tweaks for the house sound and monitors, I walk in and my guitar is sitting on a stand plugged in and ready to go. I pick it up and just start playing and the band follows and we record whatever happens. I usually have no idea what’s going to come out. Sometimes it’s a mess but many times cool things happen. Usually these jams go on and on and on. Eh… they’re jams. After massive editing this one came in at around 7:18. On this particular day I just started playing these chord changes and the band followed. It evolved a bit as we jammed and eventually the form of the song took shape. We try to do this at soundcheck before every show so you can imagine how many pieces there are lying on the “Infinity Shelf.” Sometimes it’s years before I get a chance to unearth these little jewels and when I hear them, I can’t even remember the jam itself. The track feels like an old friend I knew for a short period when I was younger. This friend brought something valuable into my life but was long forgotten until a photograph of him/her lit up a nostalgic glow within. When I found this track I did just that: I lit up. I used the track for a while to jam to in the studio and decided to build a song out of it. I revived the song in the Harmony Hut in March 2010 by editing the track, writing lyrics and recording various sound FX. I had given the song the tentative title of “Flying Over the Stars” because of its subtle, racing undercurrent and the ethereal quality of the chord changes. When it came time to do the solo I wanted to play things I had never played before so I really took my time and built this solo idea by idea. I set out making sure that virtually every riff had some kind of variation to what I might normally play. For instance, this is the first time I pulled and bent octaves with the whammy bar into workable and diatonic target notes, or used fast picking on the fret just above the notes being fretted. For me, discovering new riff concepts like this is what it’s all about. It’s the most fulfilling aspect of being a musician. In all of this riffing, I would keep at the forefront in my mind the intimate feeling of the scene created by the story of the song. I would try to make sure that all of the final riffs sounded like enjoyable pieces of music in their own little worlds. I find that if you get forensic with an idea you will uncover a world of uniqueness and then those ideas can be worked into your technique to be instinctual. When the execution of those new ideas is solid, they can be used as the foundation for other building blocks to be formed on top of them. And thus we expand the Universe. When I was 20-21 years old I went through a very deep kind of depression. It was a dark night of the soul, so to speak. One of the great reliefs I would get would come to me in a particular type of dream that I would have perhaps once every 3-4 months or so. Usually these dreams came when I was at the lowest point imaginable. I don’t put a lot of credibility in dreams. I don’t analyze them or try to figure out what they mean to me in my life. I see them as just mental entertainment while I sleep. Although I always seem to have great dreams, this particular type of dream was a very vivid kind and would have in it grandiose scenes of crystal clear planetary closeness. It’s hard to explain obviously. The scenes were usually from Earth’s orbit and the stars and planets were very bright, colorful, huge, and close. Standing out in front of all of it was our moon. It was the closest and most vivid image. Every detail could be made out. It radiated an enormous vibration of well-being, goodness, and pure contentment. When this moon was shining on me I was in a mental state of bliss, gratitude, and ecstasy. This pure state of euphoria would take away all mental angst. Elements of this feeling would stay with me for a few days and help to lift me out of the muck-and-mire I was in at the time. The lyrics are written about this moon.
Release Date: February 9, 2010
Written, Arranged and Produced by Steve Vai
This track was spontaneously born at a soundcheck sometime in the mid 1990’s. The basic gist of the melody and chord changes were captured and put on the shelf. Sometime later when I was pulling potential tracks together for the Fire Garden album I came across this melody. In listening to the disheveled and damaged recording, I heard in the melody a sort of longing. A vision of my wife Pia came to me. She was very sad, yet wore a sliver of a bittersweet smile. She was sitting on our favorite couch in the “dangerous nook” off our bedroom. (We call it that because once you let the room embrace you, it’s difficult to leave it.) I had left the world and she was left to put the pieces back together. The melody of this song is what she was feeling. The track was recorded during the demo sessions for the Fire Garden album and put on the shelf again. A few years later I was asked for a track that would be part of a compilation called “Musicians for Minneapolis Benefit”. It was for the survivors of the I-35 Bridge Disaster in Minneapolis. I was happy to find this song, brush it off, and donate it to the record. Recently, when I decided to start releasing VaiTunes, the track was remixed and re-mastered in January 2010. It is now available as a VaiTunes release. Since it was originally a studio demo I believe the guitar track is one take. It’s interesting to hear how I played back then — my choice of notes, intonation, vibrato, etc. It’s fascinating to listen to older musical sensibilities and see what was important at the time.