On June 23-27, guitar legend Steve Vai held the first Vai Academy Camp at the Gideon Putnam Resort in Saratoga Springs, NY. His webmaster has checked in with the following update:

"A very special thank you to everyone who made the very first Vai Academy a wonderful experience. Here is a video of Steve receiving an Ibanez signed by the camp's attendees."

Vai spoke with Music Radar about the Vai Academy Camp prior to the official launch. An excerpt from the interview is available below:

Q: Where did the idea for this kind of camp come from? It’s different from other things you’ve done in the past.

Vai: “It is. I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a camp for some time. Some people approached me to do some things, but they wanted me to do a very conventional-style guitar camp, which I think would be wonderful, but I wanted to do something that was different.

“When I thought back to the conversations I’ve had with young musicians and the lectures I’ve given, and when I think back to myself as a young, independent musician, a couple of things came to the surface; there were a few specific things that people were interested in. When you blow all the smoke away, these kids want to know ‘How do you write a song? Where does the inspiration come from? How do you capture it? How do you record it? How do you mix it and master it? And how do you make it available to the rest of the world and tour on it?’ That’s really what’s it’s about.

“So I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to give kids an opportunity to see this process?’ So I created this camp, which as you can imagine is really intensive. There’s various classes through the different days, and I’ll have a band with me. I’ll discuss songwriting and song inspiration, writing music, how it flows and how you communicate musical ideas to a band. They’ll get to see it and participate, to a degree. We de-mystify the songwriting process.

“I also have a professional come in to de-mystify the music publishing thing. Musicians are so intimidated – they don’t understand how publishing works. It is complicated but it’s important. Anybody who writes music or plays a note of music should have their own publishing company. They have to know how to register their music, which is really easy now. We take them through the process of starting a publishing company; in fact, we start a publishing company for the song we write, and we register it. We discuss how to protect your intellectual property, how splits usually go. This is vital information.”

Go to this location for the complete interview.