[center]MAGIX Music Maker 15 Premium is the easy-to-use music production software solution: If you've never made music, you can still get started right away and make your own songs. If you are are a musician, you will love all the software tools available to polish your masterpiece.

This is a Video instruction how to play "For The Love of God" note by note in PASSION AND WARFARE Album

Widely acclaimed as his best album, Passion and Warfare finds Steve Vai coming into his own as a composer, as well as bypassing vocals almost entirely. His style isn't quite as derivative of influences Frank Zappa and Joe Satriani as it was six years earlier on Flex-able; while some of Vai's sense of humor is still evident on tracks like the cock rock strut of "The Audience Is Listening," it is mostly replaced by a spiritual reflectiveness on ballads like "For the Love of God" and "Blue Powder" and dignified, committed rockers like "I Would Love To" and "Liberty." Vai is a more distinguished composer than most of his guitar-shredder contemporaries, and rather than simply showing off his technique, he isn't afraid to experiment or take chances in his playing. Thus, Passion and Warfare is arguably the richest and best hard rock guitar-virtuoso album of the '80s.

Steve Vai (SV) took time out from talking to muso mags to shoot the breeze with me backstage at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire on 4 June 1997. Mike Keneally (MK) also joined us on the fat floating sofa in Steve’s dressing room.

Steve Vai’s technical mastery of the guitar is such that, like a gunslinger of old, he used to challenge the audience at Frank Zappa gigs to bring along music scores for him to sight read live on stage. Naturally enough Vai’s reputation spread and his solos soon became one of the benchmarks that aspiring guitarists measure themselves against.

A brief spell in 1985 with Alcatrazz (replacing Yngwie Malmsteen), followed by a couple of years with David Lee Roth, who had by that time split, very publicly, from Eddie Van Halen. His iconic status also led to a collaboration with Ibanez with whom has designed several signature guitars.

Steve Vai's guitar work on that album is really amazing, and for the most part totally unconventional. What a monster.

What’s What With … Steve Vai
You may not know the name Steve Vai. But unless you think that heavy metal is just the stuff you don’t want in your drinking water, you’ve undoubtedly heard his screamingly fast guitar work, since he’s played with the likes of Ozzy Osbourne,David Lee Roth, Frank Zappa, and Whitesnake. Since leaving that world of overindulgence in the ’80s, Vai has maintained a successful solo career with more than a dozen albums; he appears tonight at the Keswick and on Saturday at the Borgata. I caught up with this six-string soldier before sound check. — Victor Fiorillo

RealGuitar 2.1 has been released! An erroneous sustain behaviour fixed; several minor fixes.

If you are serious about creating truly realistic sounding solo and accompaniment guitar stuff for your songs, our new product called RealGuitar is just what you need. RealGuitar is a sample-based virtual instrument with an innovative approach to guitar sound modeling and guitar part performing on keyboard.

The true power of RealGuitar lies in 3 brand new technologies incorporated in this innovative guitar performance tool:

* New multi-channel layering technology, incorporating a custom library of specially recorded samples taken from every fret of all 6 strings of a real guitar.
* The unique Floating Fret Position technology, which imitates change of fret position of a guitarist's hand on the neck. This gives you the possibility of playing on up to 104 guitar frets using just 43 keys of a standard keyboard!
* Our original Guitar Touch technology letting you easily imitate basic guitar techniques (strumming, plucking, sliding, bending, muting, etc..), using standard MIDI keyboard and MIDI controllers, such as Pitch Bender, Modulation Wheel, Sustain Pedal, Aftertouch.

These technologies allow to closely emulate live guitar sound and techniques, letting you perform guitar parts with a whole new level of realistic expression. Furthermore they made it possible to get that special recognizable sound of a real 12-string guitar using samples taken from an ordinary 6 string guitar, as well as to achieve true Doubling (double track) effect.