Dude, if you haven't seen him live yet.....go see him now!! He is getting old and time is running out on how long he will be able to play at the level he is now. I've seen him twice, once in the 80's with DLR and just 3 years ago on the "Generation Axe" tour(second row center).
auto suscribe for tuning into Steve Vai. great seeing younger folk witness his music now there's social edia etc. as he shure as shyt didn't get any radio play.
For this song the sound has a lot to do with the sustainer pickup and the voice of the Carvin Legacy amp (Steve's signature amp for many years), and yes Steve's fingers. I think for some folks he's just not resonating their frequencies. Dissing Vai to me says he's over their head.
2 years late here but same, I still find it incredibly dishonest when people say Vai “has no feel.” The first time most of us heard all the Vai songs we know now, he hit us right in the soul. Still doing so with his recent music!
The way he gets that slight volume swell at the beginning of the notes in the first part of the song is he frets the note and let’s the sustainer pickup start making the string vibrate so he doesn’t even have to pick the note
Almost.... just as important is depressing the whammy bar, essentially sliding into the note. And in the Astoria recording you can see he’s using the Morley Little Alligator volume pedal to ‘volume swell’ the notes. Though the sustainer comes in handy, that comes into play more with the long held notes at the start. Most of it can be done pretty much without all the gear though, have a look at Steve Morse’s solo on ‘Total Abandon: Deep Purple in Australia’, for both him - and also someone like Jeff Beck - do the swells with the volume knob. For this song however, that wouldn’t work because then you’re unable to properly use/depress the whammy bar. The little delay-thing at the start is created similarly with volume swells, similar to what Eddie Van Halen does on Cathedral.
