Jump to content

who schools who satch vs vai


The Nordic Gawd

satch or vai?  

28 members have voted

You do not have permission to vote in this poll, or see the poll results. Please sign in or register to vote in this poll.

Recommended Posts

personally i think that satriani can do all of vais tricks and some more. He's a little more modest and his melodies are great. not to say vai doesnt have some great melodies. I'm a huge fan of bad horsie. But i think that cool #9 kicks the crap out of any vai melody. I also like FLYING in a blue dream.... hell i love all his stuff. satch wins. *SATCH BOOGIE*

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 70
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

first things first, get vai's the seventh song cd, then talk about melodies.

and second, it's FLYING IN A BLUE DREAM!!!!!!

listen to the seventh song cd, it's all of his melodic ballady stuff. wonderful.

verdict, i think it would be a tie. they are yin and yang. if they ever were to occupy the same space they would implode. :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i know yin and yang are opposite, that's what i meant. satch is more smooth and vai is more spiny.

whatever that means!!!! :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We must however keep in mind that Vai and Malmsteen improvise a bit more whereas Satch plays his songs more note-for-note so there's much less chance of him screwing up. Satch is smoother and more melodic but rather predictable. Vai is more spectacular and on the edge. In fact, at the G3 concert, even though Satch is my favorite of the three, his set was somewhat anti-climactic after Vai.

Edit: I love the spontaneity and uniqueness of a live performance. That's why I find improvisation so attractive. That's also why I go mostly to jazz concerts and rarely to rock shows.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Litchfield Custom Gutars

It depends on style. Vai is better at the improv bluesy thing Satch is better at the not for note live hard rock thing. I like both, and think that they have definately found their niche. I prefer Vai's style, but as for skill, the both ROCK!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Damn!

Someone in another forum posted this very cool letter by a special guy, the '4th' guy, in the little Satriani school.

If you don't know, Satch actually DID school Vai, Kirk Hammett, and 2 others (this guy was one) when they were all in, what, junior high school (Satch was a teacher by then).

Long story short, Vai would probably be NOWHERE NEAR what he is today if it were not for Joe Satriani schooling him for years, driving him very hard to achieve.

But Satriani admitted that his student had surpassed him in the end, so to me it's a 50/50 tossup.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a lot of respect for Satch, but I don't think he could pull off every one of Steve's tricks (well, at least not with the same ease that Steve could pull off Joe's tricks). Both are awesome, but if push came to shove, I'd have to say Vai.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK, I'm NOT a ree-tard! (whew)

I found it in a saved file, here it is in it's posted entirety.

BTW, this was posted at the MIMF, so they're maybe not quite as 'stuff-shirted' as some here would believe!

Maybe this will clear a few things up...

___________________________________

Lesssons from a master

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bill Machrone - 12:43am Sep 11, 2003 EST

Proud MIMForum Subscriber

My friend and coworker, Sebastian Rupley, is PC Magazine's west coast editor and is an avid guitarist. I told him about the ongoing discussions that evolved from the Rolling Stone list, and he sent me the following. It blew me away.

------

When I was finishing junior high school in Berkeley, I negotiated with my mother to stop taking the classical guitar lessons she had forced on me so I could start to take rock lessons. Two blocks away from junior high was a tiny store called Second Hand Guitar Shop. There was a sign in the window that said "Rock Guitar Lessons" and it said they cost $8 for a half an hour. Purely because this was the easiest way to make my switch, and within my mom's set budget for the lessons, I went in and signed up. A couple nights later, this guy calls me at home and says "hi this is Joe Satriani, and I'll be your guitar teacher." He was 25 at the time, unknown, but as absolutely good then as he is today. He didn't even play in a band and when I would ask him why he wasn't out trying to hit it big, he would say "I'm working on some things right now." He told me to go to a stationery store and buy a quadrille notebook (there are crosshatched lines in them which means the diagram-drawing teacher doesn't have to draw the fretboard), and to show up on Tuesday at 4 p.m.

From the first lesson, I was aware of the force of nature that was in front of me. After about three months of lessons, Joe gave me a little talk about the musical family he had come from and the lessons he had taken with Lennie Tristano in NY. He said that Tristano would often give him "six note lessons." That meant that Joe would play five notes from a scale he had been assigned to learn, play a wrong note on the sixth, and then Tristano would announce that the lesson was over. I didn't know it at the time, but Joe was prepping my attitude for an onslaught he was about to bring my way. He said he wanted to switch my lessons to 7 p.m. on Tuesdays, and that there were seven other students he was moving to evening lessons. He said he wanted to try to turn all of us into good players, that he was going to pour some devotion into that, and that there would no longer be any time limit on the $8 lessons. From that day on, the evening lessons stretched on to two hours and sometimes longer--every week throughout high school. He put the other seven students--all but two of us in high school--together for many lessons, so that we could learn to improvise with other players. He discouraged us from playing in bands while we did this studying ("at this stage it will teach you to play like everyone else").

All eight of us put all of our hearts into it. None of us ever had a yearbook, or attended a single high school dance, or a game. We were the only people each other knew in high school. The amount of work Joe assigned us was medieval--often an entire quadrille notebook would be filled with assignments at one lesson. Play the Phrygian scale up and down each string. Play it in two octaves. Play it in three octaves. Harmonize it, three octaves, in thirds. Harmonize it in fourths. Use a flanger, a chorus pedal, and harmonics to take the scale to tonal ranges "unavailable to other players." You would stay up until two each night mastering all this, and then at your lesson Joe would play a rhythm based on the minor chords that go with a Phrygian scale, for you to solo over for a half an hour. If you fell into a quick pattern of playing common-sounding riffs, Joe would say "that sounds like Eric Clapton, and the world already has him." Your lesson would be over. Joe called this method of teaching modal improvisation where previously heard sounds are excommunicated "guitar minus the guitar."

By senior year, several things were clear among the eight evening students. One was that we were being taught in the salon-style fashion that people in Mozart's era learned music in. We had all also become quite good. Joe would leave the door of the guitar store open on hot nights, and people from the restaurants across the street would gather outside to listen. Because many of us observed the rule about not playing in bands, but were hungry for feedback, we would go into music stores, pull Stratocasters off the wall, and play three-octave arpeggios at breakneck speed. Even the employees would come over to watch.

A negative thing had crept into the group of eight, too, though. The two players who were out of high school and dedicating their time to learning from Joe had become far better than the others. Joe would frequently pair us up with them to push us, and boy did they. If you proudly displayed your three-octave arpeggios, Kirk would reach his right hand up on the fretboard to tap the same notes at the same speed, while simultaneously tweaking the volume knob so that you couldn't hear the attack on any note--only the swell of each one. It sounded like violin... guitar minus the guitar.

It seemed from watching them that our time was being wasted, that there must be others like them locked up in bedrooms all over America playing like them. This was a crushing feeling in a very competitive situation, where you couldn't see how bizarre the social experiment you were in really was. Our parents, worried about our obsession, had forced us to get good grades to keep taking the lessons, so those of us near the bottom of the pack of eight did the right thing and applied to college. We took our Hendrix pictures down from the walls, cut our hair, tried to become normal.

Joe encouraged four of the eight to pursue music after high school--even meeting with their parents ("Mildred, your son is going to be a rock star"). And then, when I was in college, the most amazing thing happened. All four who did pursue music almost instantly shot past what it is to be a rock star and ended up on the cover of Guitar Player magazine. They are: Kirk Hammett (Metallica); Steve Vai (David Lee Roth band, Whitesnake, solo career); David Bryson (Counting Crows); and Larry LaLonde (Primus).

In their first Guitar Player interviews, Kirk and Steve waxed on about their teacher, still locked up in a little guitar store. The editors helped Joe get hooked up with a tiny record label: Relativity. Joe wrote me a letter saying he had a small budget to record an album he would call Surfing With The Alien. I wrote him back saying I loved the title, that it corresponded to the lessons. It quickly became what it still is: one of the largest selling instrumental albums of all time. No Miles Davis or John Coltrane recording did better. Mick Jagger heard it, called Joe at his Berkely home, and invited him to be his lead guitarist on his first solo tour. After that, Joe could do whatever he wanted.

That's the cool end of the story: how his two favorite and best students lifted him out of obscurity. I think about that every day.

Steve Vai, is, btw, the very best rock guitarist on the planet (Joe conceded, senior year, that his student had surpassed him). He would spend all day transposing violin concertos for electric guitar. He is the guitar player that David Lee Roth chose after hundreds of auditions at the height of his Van Halen fame, and he is the guitar player that Hollywood cast as the Stratocaster-slinging devil in the end of the movie Crossroads. He comes from NY and plays there frequently. Make sure and go if you haven't seen him.

Sebastian

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest AlexVDL

I'm now going to talk in general:

Steve Vai, is, btw, the very best rock guitarist on the planet (Joe conceded, senior year, that his student had surpassed him

You know, that's exactly what a good humble person would say about a good friend etc. :D He would be arrogant to say that steve still isn't better....

But then again, those two great guitarists are completely different, so you cannot say that the one is "better" than the other!

I still find it absolutely BULLSHIT to say someone is "better" than him or her....

If you want to find out, just let them play the same thing and listen who plays it the best in your opinion... yeah I said "your" opinion, because some people like for example a riff that is played technically perfect, or a riff that is slighty less perfect but has "that" feeling to it. Some can play it perfectly and also have that feel to it.

Or for instance some guitarplayers have that scratchy sound from the plectrum; there are people who love it and some people hate that sound. It doesn't make that guitarplayer any less good.......

So please let's cut the crap about who's better or not, it is simply not comparable because of musical styles and taste B)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It seems to me that Steve Vai has completely mastered the mechanics of playing the guitar. The instrument is an extension of his body. Joe has awesome mechanics as well. I wish I could hear Joe's mind attached to Steve's hands. Actually, come to think of it, maybe it wouldn't be all that different from what Joe plays now. He really doesn't seem to need the flash or intense speed/accuracy to express his music.

Joe's Engines of Creation (I can't remember the exact title) is incredibly unique. I have every Satch CD - he inspired me to stick with instrumental music.

One of my favorite Vai songs is "For the Love of God" played live. Very expressive and melodic but searingly intense at moments with perfect execution and speed but without over-doing it. I only have two Vai CD's so I'm probably missing out.

Certainly not worth haggling of "the best" but I enjoy listening to peoples comments about them.

Another person I will mention briefly who I think a lot of people don't fully understand is George Lynch. Everyone probably remembers him from Dokken but his solo stuff is great. Listen to "I Will Remember" very nice. Much different from Satch / Vai.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...