The Moon And I
Did you know that Steve Vai jams with his band for a good 5 or 10 minutes at soundcheck?
Did you also know that he Records all of these soundchecks?
The Moon And I (VaiTunes #2)
The Moon and I is the second one of these soundcheck born tunes to be released,The first was Without Me (VaiTunes*)
, here’s some of what Steve had to say about “The Moon and I”;
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.
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.
If your not familiar with Steve Vai gamers amongst you may have heard is playing on the Music from the Xbox game “Halo” (click here to buy mp3)
You can buy The Moon And I from Amazon buy clicking here.
Please comment and let me know what you think of it,
Cheers,
JD
