“I was happy if I got 9 hours a day”: Steve Vai on the crazy practice schedule he developed as a teenager
How did Steve Vai get so good at guitar? Well, it could be to do with the rigorous – to put it lightly – practice regimen he adopted from a young age.
In a new interview with Billy Corgan on the Smashing Pumpkins leader’s podcast The Magnificent Others, Vai recalls becoming obsessed with the guitar in his early teenage years, and developing a round-the-clock training schedule to sharpen his skills.
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“When I was younger I chose the route of being fascinated by chops,” the virtuoso recalls. “It was an interesting discovery, and it was just something as simple as, ‘Look, if you sit down and just practice, you get better.’”
He continues: “And when I started getting better, it gives you a feeling of enthusiasm, self-respect, which I needed at the time. So it becomes sort of like an addiction.
“Practicing endlessly is not for everybody. It’s only for those that have a pull to do it. You can try to force it, but if it doesn’t feel natural to you, [it won’t happen].”
When asked by Billy Corgan about how many hours a day he would practice early in his guitar-playing career, Vai replies: “My schedule back then – I was happy if I got nine hours a day. I was very neurotic, very myopic.”
Vai says it was as early as 12, 13, and 14 years old that he became so engrossed and obsessed with honing his guitar skills.
“It just had such a pull, such an attraction, such an interest. Such a joy,” he explains.
“The funny thing was, it didn’t feel like discipline. People say, ‘You must have been very disciplined.’ Sometimes I would go to sleep early on a Friday so I could wake up and practice all the way ‘til Monday… I’m not a very disciplined person in that way. It was a passion. Passion is a much more powerful engine of creation than discipline.
“Discipline implies you have to fight something, you have to push yourself to do something that you don’t really wanna do. But passion says, ‘You’re gonna do this because you want to do it.’ There’ll be challenges along the way but there’s never the thought of giving up. Because it’s in your heart.”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
