💫🎰🔆🎸🪄🎼😺

Regarding hearing music in everyday sounds, I wonder what Vai and Chanan make of John Cage or Steve Reich, where those concepts are explored and composed. Thank you for this great interview!

When he's talking about the concept of time that has no conventional notation, I'm wondering if he's looked deeply into Conlon Nancarrow and irrational time signatures. He came up with his own notation because he worked with odd denominators (21/7 for example) and had piano roll players to perform them. You can find ensembles playing his compositions. Fascinating stuff to my mind and seldom discussed. When you think about it in fractions of seconds all humans perform marginally outside the grid. Constantly modulating.

I'm a lifelong Zappa fan and I'm still amazed at his music and performances

I was lucky enough to hear The adventures of Greggery Peckary performed in its entirety at the BBC Proms in the RAH a few years ago. Absolutely beautiful piece of music. Thank you very much for explaining how skillfully it's constructed.

Yeah this is like it could be a Colin Moulding song off the Big Express Album

❤👏🔥AMAZING! Vai talking about FZ days, musicianship, etc and your interview style are always inspiring.

Thanks for the insight ☮️❤️‍🔥✨🎶💥

Love the transcription discussion! Obviously a deep connection between these gents.

Thank you so much, I could listen to this all day! Very insightful to hear Steve talking about subdividing the time notation for the sake of accurate expression on the page. That’s something I always would over-think when having to express something in standard notation, it’s nice to see subtle variations acknowledged

Thanks Steve and Chanan for spreading the love so generously❤️

I do not know much of Vai's music and am not a Zappa fan, but Vai is getting to the soul of music and has great advice, transparent and hidden, for any musician.

❤

MY UNIVERSE -- THIS IS GENIUS. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, Chanan. (And yes, I have the book LOL.)

Frank Zappa and Steve Vai never cease to amaze me...

10:16 shows up in Holiday in Berlin

52:44 til the end of the video had me tearing up. Thank you Steve and Chanan!

24:20 bro Steve is hilarious!!

Whew.....

Fantastic interview. What Steve talks about at the beginning is so relatable. Sometimes it takes years or decades to find “your thing” when you’ve been focused on what you originally wanted to accomplish.

Thank you! This is the stuff I want to know. THE MUSIC and MUSICIANSHIP.

Thanks so much Channan and Steve for the great conversation! I'm looking forward to checking out the one with Mike Kenneally next😎

Not only is Steve a prodigy but he's a wonderful human being! I could listen to him tell stories all day!

Thank you for this. I love hearing Steve talk about his experience. Great interview ❤

That touring schedule is insane!

Fantastic as usual. Thanks!

I'm so pleased I discovered Zappa at 14, and now, at nearly 49, I still find it incredible to listen to, and I'm always discovering new elements within the music that I haven't heard before

These interviews are the best thing on youtube. What absolute gems!!!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH! I've the Frank Zappa Guitar Book.

Steve's love for music is so infectious. I'm so glad I got to see him live. It was an amazing experience.

Fuck yeah!

This is big Swiftys.😉

The word "authentic" is the one that keeps popping up in my head. Frank, Steve, this interview, the notes, the meaning, everything this is about. I miss Frank so much. I am now the age Frank was when he passed which is very hard to compute. I've done nothing compare to the Man, nothing....but i am so grateful, so grateful.

It was so great for me to meet Steve Vai at Berkelee when I went for the summer semester. There was an amazing concert where it was Steve, and this other guitar player Lauren Lieber And I tell you the two of them just blew my mind apart and years later I met Steve at the Egg in Albany And he says that was an amazing night for him cuz that was the night he also met his wife to be.

Your videos are always really great, thank you. Nice nod at FZ's shoes too 😉

Hopefully one day Mike K and Steve will tour together again

Great interview. Steve looks so happy and comfortable speaking to someone with such an understanding of his work.

<3

Chanan, you're absolutely right. We're really genuinely interested in these stories and conversations. Thanks Steve and Chanan for these videos!

Great work yet again.

I love it when Steve had a tiny boast about his transcriptions. Why not.

Chanan and Steve, thanks so much for this. You are both incredible guitarists, well-spoken, very intelligent and approach your lives, your art and your regard for Frank from an authentic loving place. This was like hearing an undiscovered masterpiece from the man himself. A Chanan-Vai Symphony in Z Major.

Chanan, your interviews with Steve are the best. I always want to know more and more about Steve's early career and time with Zappa.

I'm 68 and I've been listening to FZ since I was about 11. A friend's brother turned me on to him . I've been a fan ever since. Seen him, read his book which I still have and I have lots of his music. I have Steve's stuff too. Which. I love this was great.

I'm picturing a young Steve Vai trying to transcribe these crazy polyrhythms that...were created using xenochrony, by Frank splicing these entirely different tracks together: instruments in different tempos, different times, completely different recordings. To be able to do that requires a certain beginner's mind that would be very difficult, if not impossible to find today.

Around 35: time he is saying the exact thing as said on Lumpy Gravy, "Atoms are vibrations you know, which are extentions of the big note, everything is an extention of the big note." I dont know who it is speaking, in thge recording on the album, but I connected as a teen with the words on that album, as well as the mucic on Lumpy Gravy.

Little bit of clickbait here. He never talks about fellow bandmates.

Guys with light blue hair. I've seen the shows - in "a place that wasn't built for music" (FZ) - and Steve, always left stage, was his own Paganini fireworks factory. Especially with Vinnie doing this thing (on banana yellow kit). Unforgettable.

Also saw one of Vai's tour, with Mike and Virgi Donatil on the drums (in Lisbon at Aula Magna) !

Later discovered Mike's albums, what a guitarist ! Lots of friends, around me, became fans too !

I was lucky enough (or not) to see Frank's last tour, with Mike in the line up ! Probably the best concert I ever saw, and best band sound too ! The tour was "The best band you never heard in your life" (there's a record of that repertoire), and the concert was in Grenoble, just after the Barcelona concert , (you can watch it on YT), before Milan, that never happened. I believe the band split just after and Frank was too sick to continue . What a concert ! ps funny fact, it was during that concert that I found the guitar amp that I was searching for. It took me years to find it and still use it to this day! I know part his gear was stolen (in France), during an European tour, and wonder if it's not his, that I have... Very weird, the way I found it, in Paris! It's an 'acoustic' wooden combo, with an EV full range speaker on it, all tubes .