Steve Vai recently visited Guitar Center to shoot some promo for his new signature Spark Mini Vai 10-watt smart guitar amp when he dropped some solid-gold advice for any player who is looking to improve their electric guitar tone – especially beginner players.
What Vai says is a great reminder that it is not just your guitar, your brand of strings, thet amp you use or which overdrive pedal you have on your ‘board. Yes, the gear matters, but paying attention to how we play is what really matters.
“People say, the tone is in the amp, the tone is in the guitar, the tone is in the neck, the tone is in the the body or the pickups. On one level, yes. There is a tone in all of those things,” says Vai. “But you’re the boss of the tone, because you’re the one playing it, and you’re the one hitting the note.”
This isn’t just for shredders in training. Vai’s wisdom is relevant for players of all styles. Before going through a cavalcade of amps, he advises us to think about how we are addressing the strings. It all goes back to the old maxim “the tone is in the fingers”. But what does that mean?
It is all about the intensity you play with. How you hold the guitar pick. Vai says we have to take all of these things into consideration. Technique and tone go hand in hand.
“The tone of the note has so many moving parts to it,” says Vai. “One of them is just where you hit the string.”
This is an invaluable detail for beginner players to keep in mind. Pick near the bridge for a more trebly sound. Pick near the neck and you get more bass. Some styles of music might call for you to switch it up. Be mindful of how hard you are fretting a note. Pushing down too hard on the strings and you’ll sound sharp.
Good intonation might begin with how your guitar is set up but it is also a function of how clean your technique is. Vai’s fellow Ibanez signature artist Martin Miller is a big stickler for intonation. So too Vai’s teacher, friend and collaborator Joe Satriani.
“Joe Satriani has an ear like none other,” said Vai, speaking to MusicRadar in 2022. “When I was a kid he would say, ‘No, don’t vibrate it out of tune. You’ll sound like an idiot!’”
These are words to live by. In blues guitar, where a solo is all about tension and release, and the little details that establish personality and tell a story, adjusting your picking position and playing around with the tone – again, without touching a dial on the amp or guitar – can be an invaluable dynamic.
“It’s the way you pick,” says Vai. “How hard are you holding the pick? The intonation is dictated by how hard you push, how hard you pull this way, what your vibrato is like… All of these things go into discovering your unique tone.”
The tone of the note has so many moving parts to it. One of them is just where you hit the string
It was around 1983 when Vai changed his picking style completely, all because he was unhappy with the sound he was getting.
“I just was getting tired of not having a great tone,” he says. “I went through all these amplifiers. I was searching for something that sounded like some of the things I was hearing at the time. Edward van Halen had hit the scene. You had Yngwie. So many players. And I could never figure out why don’t I sound good?
“I started to experiment with the way that I where I pick, how I pick, the angle, all of these things. You get to a point where you hear it and you know it, and then the work starts.”
And that is the key, says Vai. Let your ear decide whether your technique is serving your tone.
The Spark MINI Vai is out now priced $249. See Positive Grid for more details.
