circular vibrato?

[superblonde]

Steve Vai Live at the Vai Academy 2017 – For The Love of God

I'm an intermediate student of Metal Method. I play seitannic heavy metal. All Kale Seitan! ♯ ♮ ♭ ø ° Δ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
And on the Seventh Day, Mustaine said: ∇ ⨯ E = - ∂B / ∂t ; and there was Thrash; and it had a ♭3; and it was good.

[safetyblitz]

Fretless instruments like violin do vibrato by moving the finger along the length of the string. “Along the string” vibrato is also used in classical guitar (within a single fret) with gut/nylon strings for a more subtle vibrato.

It’s possible Vai is trying to combine “classical” vibrato with the more customary for steel-string “along the fret” style of vibrato.

Considering what we know about Vai’s attitude about stage performance, perhaps the most likely answer is: “it sounds no different from conventional vibrato, but Steve thinks it looks cool.” 😉

[superblonde]

It sounds significantly different to me.. much slower and smoother (whether thats a correct musical choice I dunno), the variation is neat compared to his later normal pivot (fast) vibrato.
The technique though seems quite strange, depending on what finger he’s using – I’m talking about the first 30 seconds of the song or so? – he does one circular vibrato move with his ring finger (vs index finger earlier on) and it seems like there’s a ton of finger wiggling going on, rather than a kind of controlled action like a normal pivot point would do. Just seems like a technique that is very hard to control or get a reproducible/consistently-clean sound out of the move.

I'm an intermediate student of Metal Method. I play seitannic heavy metal. All Kale Seitan! ♯ ♮ ♭ ø ° Δ ♩ ♪ ♫ ♬
And on the Seventh Day, Mustaine said: ∇ ⨯ E = - ∂B / ∂t ; and there was Thrash; and it had a ♭3; and it was good.

[MotleyCrue81]

It’s kinda just a combo of classical vibrato and your typical vibrato. I like what MAB says in Speed Kills, ‘shake the string’. He doesn’t really say ‘do it this way’ cause everybody’s technique is different, all that matters is that you grab a string and shake it. 🙂

Bring hair metal back!

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