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If I was, say, a musician hired by Frank Zappa, I found great joy in learning his music the way he wanted it performed. SV: I was always fortunate in that, the majority of the time, I’ve engaged myself in things that I found to be very enjoyable. VD: What was the evolution like from being a sideman to solo artist to audio producer? What have you enjoyed about each of these aspects of your career? Sure, there’s ruts that you can get into and dry spells, so to speak, but even through the dry spells, I feel that my inspirational army is gathering all of its tools together for another attack. And whenever I pick up the instrument, I see the infiniteness of its potential, and that just is a lovely thing because whenever you’re engaged in something, in a creative way, that gives you that feeling of enthusiasm for what you’re creating, it makes every day like Christmas. It’s a playground for your imagination constantly. SV: The realization that the creation of music on the instrument is infinite and will never not be fresh and new. VD: What keeps the instrument relevant for you? He said, I don’t want to play it I’ll sell it to you for $5, and that’s when my world changed. It was this cheap Teisco Del Rey guitar with all these pick-ups and this whammy bar. I had a friend who had a guitar on his wall in his lonely teenage Long Island bedroom. I was about 12 years old when I decided I wanted to play the guitar. But then my sister was listening to Led Zeppelin, and once I heard that, it was all over. My parents were listening to “West Side Story,” and that had an impact on me - the intense music, the melody, the drama, the story.
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I learned to compose music - I was fascinated with the little black dots, so to speak. Growing up, I was interested in composition. All those years I fantasized about the guitar, I never felt worthy of playing it I was afraid or something. The way it was slug on his body, the sound it was making, the way that it looked - it was my first love affair with the instrument. The moment I saw it, I had an epiphany, one of those moments of clarity where everything stands still and you become very, very present, and it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw. STEVE VAI: My immediate visceral, first visceral, response to the instrument was, I was 6 years old, 7 years old, and I walked into the auditorium of my school and there was a boy who was 10 years old - and when you’re six, someone who is 10 is like a god - and he was playing the guitar. VAIL DAILY: What made you originally fall in love with the guitar?
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We caught up with Vai to learn more about the camp, as well as his music career and his decades-long love affair with the guitar. Next week, guitar legend Steve Vai will bring his second Vai Academy guitar camp - All About the Guitar - to The Arrabelle at Vail Square, with classes, clinics and jams featuring guest instructors from the top echelon of the guitar world. Guitar legend Steve Vai leads camp in Vail, Aug.