Steve Vai's new album "Fire Garden" was two-and-a-half years in the making and something he describes as being "part Leonard Bernstein and Stravinsky, with Frank Zappa giving a party for Jimi Hendrix." Whether you'd go along with an analogy like that, it's hard not to hear the evidence that points to this album being Mr. Vai's magnum opus. Last year, Vai talked about some gigantic project he was working on that he needed to get away from by recording his acclaimed 1995 "Alien Love Secrets" album. "I can't believe -- now that I'm done with it -- just how long I spent on the record," he told Guitar Shop. "I wanted this record to be more in-depth than any other album I've recorded -- an orchestral album. It started out as a double CD; one was going to be vocal, the other instrumental, but I decided to cram it all on one, divided into two sections."
Vai's enthusiasm for anything and everything he does comes across like his statement about going over the top, emotionally, with his guitar. Get him on a topic such as the discovery of a new form of tuning, and his vioce takes on an uncanny level of animation. "The guitar is a really weird instrument, you know; it's never really in tune," he continues. "If you tune it for one chord, then other chords may not be in tune. If you play in open A, the open D doesn't sound in tune. It's just the way the instrument is and the way the harmonics work in the overtone series and so on. I guess that drove this one guy, Buzz Feiten, absolutely crazy. So he did some massive experimentation in a three-year period and what he was able to determine was that the scale length of the guitar is too long. When I say a little, I mean a minute amount. So what he does is he shaves the neck at the nut a little bit and then he uses this technique where all the strings aren't totally in tune in the zero sense. The high E string is zero, the B string is plus or minus .2 cents. I'm not too sure of the exact increments, I have the formula around here somewhere. And then the intonation is set slightly differently, too. So he was telling me all these parameters, and I was saying, 'Sure, sure, sure,' but he wanted to show it to me anyway. I gave him a guitar to do it on, and after he brought it back over, I'll tell you -- I played that guitar and it was like playing a different instrument. I was playing chords extremely high on the neck, in all different voicings, and they all sounded in tune to me. I could play an A barre chord at the 5th fret and then a D bar chord and both of them would sound completely in tune, which I've just never heard on the guitar. Granted, if you put distortion on and try to play fifths on the B and E string and then thirds, they'll never be in tune: It's the function of the overtone series and distortion amplifying the overtone series, which is not a perfectly tempered series of notes. The overtone series is basically the overtones that make up a single note, and what distortion does is it amplifies overtones in the higher register so they're not exactly in tune. The pitch increases exponentially, but the pitch decreases slightly as the notes get higher in the overtone series. So with his technique I can play a guitar that's in tune. I'm going to do it to all my guitars, and I'm trying to get my line of Ibanez guitars done that way, too."
The new tuning wasn't something Vai had encountered prior to the recording of "Fire Garden," so he was relying on time-tested methods and gear to put the project together, and the necessity of continually tuning his instruments. "I use the same gear onstage as in the studio, and I like stuff that's consistent night after night." he xplains. "When I'm in the studio, I can fool around with different amplifiers and whatnot, but in the guitar department I'm still using my Ibanez JEM -- it suits my needs, and because of the sound I keep going back to it."
The JEM wasn't the only guitar Steve used however, and his madness, method, and creative flair called for an array of stringed instruments. "You'll hear a cavaquino, which is a four-stringed guitar that looks like a ukulele, a Coral electric sitar, a Carvin acoustic-electric, a Taylor acoustic, and a '79 Strat on the album as well as th JEM, but the 7-string, for once, is not there." Amplifiers get more treatment in the Vai laboratory, and a special splitter box, manufactured by a faceless, nameless guit-scientist made its presence known on the album. "I found this guy who made this splitter box. I've tried for years and years to have people meke splitter boxess for me and none of them ever worked, none of them really ever discretely split the signal; it was always such that if I plugged into the box and then if I plugged into several different amps, it would always get loaded down or cause DC hum, or it would rob the signal from each output. So this guy made this really beautiful discrete splitter box. When I plug into it, I can plug out of the six outputs -- I can plug into a grungy Bogner Ecstasy amp, a SansAmp speaker simulator, a Zoom direct out, and so on -- all at once! I get these sounds and a lot of other things, and I would bring them all up on the mixing desk. Then, through a series of phasings and whatnot, I would build a gutar sound, and take each one of those guitar sounds and treat it differently: delay it or flange it or whatever, all to create this real stereo spectral guitar sound. On 'Fire Garden Suite,' there's a movement called 'Pusa Road' where there's a Coral sitar, but it sounds like several different guitars, becase it's split into many different signals: some are clean and dry, some are distorted and delayed, and some of them are harmonized up an octave. It's a really interesting sound. I would have a mic on the Ecstasy, three mics on a Fender Performer, and I would have maybe 40 or more inputs of guitar and mix it down to or four or even one track."
It's not surprising that with all the technology floating around, Vai chose
to go back to a very basic effect for a great deal of the sound that's utilized
most on "Fire Garden," -- the sound of the room itself. "I would
set up stereo mics in the corners, and they ould pick up the sound of the room
I was playing in. Then I would squash the piss out of it with an SSL or a Neve
compressor," he explains gleefully. "Then I'd throw it into a Pultec
EQ that would really beef up the sound, and that
really fills out the sound of the guitar. You can really hear it on a couple
of songs where it sounds like you're sitting in the room with me. You can get
a mor intimate sound that way; you're creating the ambience of the room, and
that's always a lot more personal than just a direct sound. I used a whole bunch
of mics from AKG C-414's or C24 stereo mics to an old Shure 57, as well as Sennheisers
and Beyers. I used an AKG C12 for the vocals."
When not being quite so personal, Vai can still be a tech-head and stretch
the limits of most gear on the arket, especially the stuff he uses day-to-day,
such as the DigiTech Whammy pedal. "I still use that withot any hesitation.
I just do different things every time I use it -- it's like a new instrument
every time. The Eventide DSP 4000 is a real nice piece of gear, especially if
you sit with it and tweak it. The things y are beyond comprehension, plus you
can make unique sounds that
you can compose pieces of musicaround. You can actually use the effect to inspire
the composition. That's one of the things I like about certain pieces of equipment."
When it came time to put the material down on tape or into whatever storage medium Steve still holds favor with, he turns out to still be old-fashioned at heart. "I record on analog. I'm not a digital fan. I use [Opcode] Vision software on a Macintosh Quadra and mix down to a Studer A-27 multi-track and then o an Ampex ATR-102 2-track. The mixing desk is an API, which has been completely modded; all the electronics were torn out and completely redone with discrete eight sends -- it's an immaculate consol. It includes 40 channels of Massenburg automation. Extras get flown into a Dyaxis 2 for editing after the fact. It's similar to Sonic Solutions."
Although the steam is still rising from "Fire Garden," Vai is already
moving forward with new projects, one on the gear side of the tracks in the
form of a wah-wah pedal. "I've been working closely with Morley on a new
pedal that has a serious flex to it -- a real smooth yet violent EQ curve. The
thing that's nice about a lot of these foot pedals is they have a certain sound
because they're analog and they don't destroy or change the signal as much as
digital. But when you pile up analog
signals, they do start to gt ally patchy and they can really disturb the signal
of instrument, so I have this pedal which when it's in the off position has
a hard bypass. That means the signal goes through the device as if the device
weren't there and that changes the sound a lot -- it's as if you're plugging
straight into the amp. If you have a wah-wah and you plug into it -- even if
it's off -- you get a deterioration in the signal. It's expensive wiring and
you have to put a relay in there. I'm an audiophile when it comes to the guitar,
so I want to make sure I'm getting the best signal path possible, and this is
one way to do it."
And for anybody listening close enough that they think they can tell the difference between real-time sounds and samples, Steve reconciles that everything was samples bought from a store, including bees and cannons. "All the samples were done on a Roland S760. I tried to manipulate them so they didn't sound like samples, but I didn't go out and sample a cannon. I bought a very expensive sample and put five cannons together. There's a sample of bees on the album -- you have no idea how much those bees cost me. I paid $1,250 for one CD that had, for one thing, a piccolo snare... which was recorded in Switzerland!"
Steve's multi-track is a two-inch, 24-track Studer.His heavily-modded API board sits at the center of his control room, under a pair of Yamaha NS-10M near-field monitors.One rack contains three digital delays (t.c. electronics, Roland, Yamaha), two Eventide Harmonizers, and a Lexicon PCM 70 reverb.
In his power amp rack: A VHT Classic provides the main power, and a Carvin 300 is the backup. There's also a pair of Carvin 150's for offstage moitoring by his guitar tech. The rack also includes a Nady 950GS, and a Furman Power Conditioner and Light Module.
In his pedalboard: DigiTech Whammy pedal (acts as a controller only; its guts are in the rack), Custom Audio Electronics RS-10 footcontroller, BOSS Distortion and Chorus pedals, Dunlop wah-wah modified by Precision Audio Tailoring (new inductor installed), and a BOSS volume pedal. A hard bypass box lies next to the fuzz and chorus boxes.
Included in his array of guitars are "EVO," a white JEM with a pearloid pickguard. It's been his #1 guitar for the past five years. It was built by Mace Bailey, formerly of the Ibanez Custom Shop. Steve uses shiny, heavy picks from Music Music in San Diego and Blue Steel strings. He uses .010s on "EVO" and "Bad Horsie" and .009s on his other axes, but will be moving all his guitars up to .010s very soon. "Bad Horsie" is a natural JEM with an ash body for a thicker sound. It's tuned C-G-C-F-A-D. A piece of Velcro on the back holds the slide that Steve uses to play the song of the same name. Finally there is "Lasher," a white JEM that Steve smashes nightly during the song "Kill the Guy With the Ball." Roger Bell, Steve's tech, has to rebuild it after almost every gig.