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(Internet Music Media) (09/21/09)
By John Slywka  In August 2009, I had the privilege to speak with Steve Vai regarding his latest DVD/CD release (due September 29th on the Favored Nations label) called "Where The Wild Things Are." Filmed at the Minneapolis State Theatre on September 19, 2007, Steve speaks candidly and in great detail about his band, the goals and the great care that went into the production of his first Hi Def filmed concert release. IMM: I'm calling to learn more about "Where The Wild Things Are." Could you describe how the 2007 tour came about? SV: Sure. It was a glorious tour. I had just finished a double live orchestra record that had taken me 2 years to put together. It was so much work, and it involved sitting down in a studio for the most part and composing, and after the performances editing it and mixing it, etc. So I was ready to go out on tour instead of going back and making a real studio record. So I thought, 'let me put a band together.' Whenever I go to do a new project I always try to challenge myself by doing something different than anything I've done before, and maybe try to do something unique to what else is going on. My music lends itself to a compositional approach, and I had just come off of this record with the orchestra, so I thought, 'let me get two violin players and see how I can dimensionalize the music.' It was kind of difficult to get the right players because most of the people that came down were kind of 'metal shred' players. A lot of them didn't understand the nuances of the music or they couldn't read music, which was pretty necessary in this situation. When it came time to audition classically-trained people who knew how to read music and all, when it came down to playing rock 'n' roll it was like 'alien' to them, you know? It was very wimpy. So I really needed the right kind of players that struck the balance, and the gods of good karma just sprinkled fairy dust on me when little Ann Marie Calhoun popped into my life and Alex DePue rammed his car into my life, you know? And these players are just tremendous. I was so stunned - they have unbelievable control over their instruments, they can read anything, but they know how to rock out. They blend together, they're like the devil and the angel, you know? They're very respectful of the music and disciplined and were very supportive and they're really good people - they're fun to tour with. So I put the band together and we rehearsed for 30 days -- probably about 12 to 15 hours a day -- and I created a playlist of a variety of stuff. One of the greatest parts about what I do, or what any person in the creative position can do, is the process of imagining something - imagining the project. So the process of bringing these violin players into the fold was part of it, but constructing the show in my head is like a real part of the fun. Because then I can conceive of how I want the show to be and how I want the audience to feel, because primarily I am an entertainer like all artists and when people come to the show I want them to feel that they're being thoroughly entertained. I want them to feel as if they're seeing elite musicianship, but they're not necessarily getting beat up by somebody's musical ego. And also, I want them to feel the dynamics of a show, the emotional dynamics. So the show really spans quite a wide range of dynamics - everything from peeling-the-skin-off-your-face brutally intense to caressing your soul in a melodic bed of roses, you know? I try to create an atmosphere of 'oneness,' I want people to feel like they're a 'part of the secret.' The band and myself especially are very musically extroverted... we're not really like in our own little world. I try to bring the audience in, and most of all I want people to walk away feeling like: a) they've been thoroughly entertained, b) that they saw something that they never would have expected, and that it's something that they're never going to see anyplace else except at one of my shows. And also see that they feel uplifted somehow, because that's the goal, right? I want people to feel as though they experience something that raised the quality of their life somehow. So I set those goals up, and when you plant these mental seeds they just have a tendency to start to bear fruit if you let them, so hopefully that's what the people who resonate with the kind of thing I do will get out of this DVD. IMM: Were you thinking post-production-wise, even prior to the tour, of what this DVD was going to look like, sound like? SV: Absolutely. As a whole picture. Elements of it evolved as I was doing it. IMM: What were a couple examples of that? SV: Well, I hired a crane, and when I got into the edit bay I realized that the crane guy was out of focus for the entire show and that it was too dark. So I could only use moments of that very expensive footage, you know? So that put a clamp on my dynamic, but then again one of the things that really exploded for me was the audio because I had been using a particular approach in my digital audio mixing for a couple of years and on this record I decided to try every single piece of gear and technique in mixing that was available in order to come up with the best, and it was very time-consuming and very expensive. But I got something that just was... it's like night and day. So that part of the equation turned out so much better than I expected. I can go on and on about the little nuances, but the big picture was there. IMM: To follow up a little bit more on the audio mixing, I remember reading in the liner notes for 'Sound Theories' that there were 2 1/2 years of "forensic audio editing" that went into that. And I know that was of multiple performances, and this was a single performance... But was it similar editing-wise? There are also the stereo, the 5.1 mixes... were they approached similarly, or were they approached differently? SV: Well, parts of it. 'Where The Wild Things Are' was recorded, basically -- 85% of the (music from the) "show" was performed and recorded in soundcheck, and then we did the show after that. When we did the soundcheck, it was like a run-through of the show because I wanted to have something to fall back on in case there was a disaster or, you know, wrong notes. So what I did was then I took the show and I put it together in a rough kind of a way with a very rough mix, and then I went about going through it and finding parts that maybe were better in the soundcheck. I'd say probably 80% of the show is from the show, and 20% is from the soundcheck. So to that degree there was a lot of editing involved because when you're switching from one scene to another you've got to make sure everything works, you've got to cut everything together. But it wasn't anything like dealing with an orchestra and 5 or 6 shows -- that was crazy! Because you figure I listened to every note that every person played in the orchestra, and a lot of the times it wasn't the best performance and I had to go through all of the performances to find all the best shit. It was unbelievable what I did for that record. For this record I did the same thing, but it wasn't nearly the scope. And then when I got the audio and the video where I wanted it then it came time to mix it. And when it came time to mix it, the majority of the time was spent on... there was some fixing. There was not nearly what I used to do, because look -- if I can't play it right by now, you know (laughs)? And these days there's equipment that can help some things. If something's out of pitch a little bit, I can just go and change the pitch of it a little bit... I don't have to go through ridiculous steps to get it right. But still there is a certain level of quality that I want it to be, and I work until it gets there. And then came the experimental phase - coming out of the digital 'box' and mixing it in the analog world, which I hadn't done since I turned to digital. And it made the world of difference. And every step along the way including the converters that I used, the EQs that I used, the stereo summing mixers that I used, I had stuff custom-built for me... IMM: Interesting... SV: It was an amazing process. But when you get this DVD and if you get a chance to watch it and listen to it, or the live CD that comes with it, I hope that you like it because it's the best I can do, and to me it sounds really good. Continued >> Copyright 2003-2010 Internet Music Media. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. |
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