At Guitare en Scene festival in St Julian, France on July 15th, guitar legend Steve Vai joins Dweezil Zappa on stage for first time in 10 years to jam on a classic piece of the Zappa repertoire, "Muffin Man". Vai even ends up doing a surprise vocal turn. Check out the clip below.

Vai's first-ever interactive video guitar masterclass, Alien Guitar Secrets: Passion and Warfare, is now available at TrueFire. The video masterclass (Windows, Mac, and iOS compatible) features 4+ hours of video lessons, tab, notation, 11 naked tracks and 6 bonus live performance videos.

Learn more at this location and enter the Steve Vai Giveaway for a shot at winning the autographed Steve Vai Carvin Legacy 3 Amp that he used during the filming of the masterclass!

Bonus: use promo code "VAI" at checkout to save 15%.

Vai will giving several Alien Guitar Secrets masterclasses in Italy this September. Classes will fill quickly, reserve your space today. Dates are as follows:

September
18 - Fiorano (Modena), Italy - Teatro Astoria   
19 - San Giovanni alla Vena (Pisa), Italy - Blitz Live Music Pub    
20 - Rome, Italy - Planet Live Club
21 - Cagliari, Italy - venue tba
23 - Foggia, Italy - Teatro Giordano
24 - Martirano Lombardo (Catanzaro) - Sala Cesare Nava
25 - Palermo, Italy - Teatro Santa Cecilia
26 - Verona, Italy - Teatro Astra

Go to this location for ticket information.

Vai has posted an overview of the Modern Primitive / Passion And Warfare 25th Anniversary behind-the-scenes video clip that was released last week:

"Hey folks,

Sterling Ball is a dear friend and has been for many years. I’ve been exclusively using his excellent Ernie Ball strings for decades because for me, they work best. On virtually all my records I have used a Choral sitar on at least one song but was always in search of something with more dimension. As a gift Sterling made me this spectacular and exotic sitar that is unique, and I believe that it will appropriately be used in the future whenever I reach for that sound. Thanks to Sterling and Ernie Ball Music Man for their amazing work here. http://bit.ly/DivyaDora

And I can also be seen in the video using my old Fender Sticker Strat. Strats have a particular sound that I like to blend in recordings at times and it was wonderful to break-out my old Sticker Strat for the recording of a song that I wrote on that guitar. For the recording of Modern Primitive I used my main Ibanez Guitars Jems: EVO, Flo III and 7-string Universe Bruno on the majority of the recordings. I am the Jem. l am even shaped like a Jem! As you may have read, Modern Primitive was written and conceived between Flex-Able and Passion And Warfare— which is right around the time I designed the Jem based on specific idiosyncrasies of my playing. These guitars have been a pivotal part of my recording, writing and live performance for over 30 years.

Lastly, you might be interested to know I employed an 8-string Ibanez on tracks like 'Mighty Messengers', 'The Lost Chord' and 'No Pockets'. I use a plethora of gear in the studio from all sorts of companies to add different colors to the music. For instance, in the video I mention that I used an Orange amp on one song. I occasionally blend various amps into one tone and it’s not uncommon for me to mix 3 or more different amplifiers (via re-amping) to get one color. But I would say that perhaps 75% or more of the audible amp sound on Modern Primitive’s recent guitar recording is my Carvin Legacy. I use the Legacy because for me, nothing sounds like the Legacy. It’s my favorite amp tone. It’s really me and I’m so grateful to have this amp. And Carvin is truly a wonderful company.

I do feel fortunate to receive many gifts of gear from various companies and sometimes that gear can be special and I will put it to the appropriate use that’s dictated soley by my creative manager that abides in the formless dimension within, because he/she/it's really the boss."