Steve Vai and Favored Nations / Mascot Label Group recently released his new studio album titled Inviolate. He spoke with Music Radar about working out how to play and write on his new triple-necked Ibanez Hydra guitar. Following is an excerpt from the chat.

Vai: "I’ll be honest with you. I’ll be intimate here, and I don’t apologise for this, and I don’t feel guilty, there came a point when I was working on the Hydra, and I was working on a section, and all of a sudden it clicked. And I saw myself doing it, I started to weep. The joy was so great that I had to stop for a minute, and take moment of appreciation to the universe for supplying that idea and sticking with me until it reached that point of joyous performance in an elegant, seamless, magical, mysterious way.

When I first sat behind the Hydra I just thought, ‘What were you thinking, Vai? How can you do this? You don’t have the independence. It’s impossible.' A familiar little voice came into my head saying, 'Shut the fuck up and do this. You got it. You have got to know that you can do it; you just have to put the time in. So shut up, get out of the way, and just do it.'"

Read more here.

Inviolate's mesmeric opener, “Teeth Of The Hydra,” is a sinuous, Latin-fusion-tinged composition that Vai wrote and recorded with a one-of-a-kind custom guitar he coined the Hydra. Built in conjunction with the designers at Hoshino and based on a “steampunk motif” idea of Vai’s, the Hydra is a beast of an instrument - a one-bodied, two-headstock-ed, three-neck-ed creature that encompasses, among other things: 7 and 12-string guitars; a 4-string ¾ scale length bass; 13 sympathetic harp strings; half-fretless necks; single-coil, humbucking, piezo, MIDI and sustainer pickups; floating and hardtail tremolo bridges; phase splitters; and much, much more. Director Garson Yu and his team at yU+co were brought on to capture a deep look in to this magnificent creation which can be screened below:

Vai shares, “It's an incredibly-built machine. I told the guys at Hoshino, ‘Anything that you think is conventional, don't do that.’ This was an opportunity to exercise brutal creativity. And they went beyond.” As did Vai in his performance. Throughout the track he employs the Hydra’s full range of tone and timbres to craft a guitar part that sounds, in its expansiveness and expressiveness, positively alive. “The interesting thing about the song and the guitar is that it all came at the same time,” Vai says. “It was one of those ‘inviolate’ inspirations – boom! I knew that I needed to create something with the Hydra that sounded like a real piece of music. It couldn’t be just a novelty. Because if you knew what my hands were doing, and how I'm using my left hand to create phrasings that work when I can't pick a note because my right hand is off somewhere else…my god. But the finished piece had to stand on its own. It couldn't sound like I was just trying to juggle stuff.”

Watch a visualizer for "Teeth Of The Hydra" below:

Vai’s newest and 13th solo album, Inviolate, is a nine-song opus that pushes the boundaries of instrumental guitar music. The body of work presents his most focused, streamlined and perhaps invigorating music in years. “It’s very ‘Vai,’ whatever that means,” he says, and then laughs. “Someone else might be better than me at explaining what that is. But it’s just very honest music. Because a lot of my records, they're long and there's a lot of concepts and playing around with stories. This one has none of that. This is nine pretty dense all-instrumental compositions that I wanted to capture and record so I could get out there and play them live for people.”

In essence, it all comes down to finding your own voice, and then having the courage and conviction to follow your musical and creative instincts wherever they may take you – something Vai has never been shy about in his playing. “One of the great things about the guitar is you don't need to be a virtuoso to express your creative vision,” he says. “I mean, Bob Dylan plays the guitar perfectly well for his expression. So does John McLaughlin. You just need to decide how much technique you want or need to get there. For myself, I came out of the chute wanting and needing it all. When it comes to my music, I don’t feel like I have to prove anything or conform to anything. I just love to think up creative ideas, and then use whatever skill I have to manifest them.”

“An inviolate inspiration is one that comes to you completely pure,” Vai explains. “It appears almost in its completeness, and there’s a recognition of it as being right for you – perfectly right for you. There’s no excuses in it. There's no fantasy in it. There's just a recognition of ‘yes.’ And then you capture that in a way that’s authentic to your unique creativity. Hopefully, that’s what I’ve done with this record.”

Inviolate can be ordered in various formats, here.

Tracklisting:

"Teeth Of The Hydra"
"Zeus In Chains"
"Little Pretty"
"Candle Power"
"Apollo In Color"
"Avalancha"
"Greenish Blues"
"Knappsack"
"Sandman Cloud Mist"

“Zeus In Chains” visualizer:

"Little Pretty" video:

"Candle Power":

"Knappsack"

Photo by Greg Wurth