REVIEW: Steve Vai – Naked Tracks (2008 5 CD set)

STEVE VAI – Naked Tracks (2008 Light Without Heat)

I’m not a guitar player so my review of this box set will be limited to non-player knowledge. Steve Vai designed this set for guitar players to improvise over. He removed the lead guitar from selected tracks from the following albums:

  • Passion & Warfare
  • Sex & Religion
  • Alien Love Secrets
  • Fire Garden
  • Alive in an Ultra World
  • The Ultra Zone
  • Real Illusions: Reflections

He encourages the players to improvise rather than learn the original solos, and make loops of songs in order to play away as long as they want.

As I said I’m not a real guitar player, just a wanna-be, but I love Steve’s music and I enjoyed hearing his songs deconstructed. You can hear a lot of keyboards and backing guitars that you can’t hear with the lead guitar mixed in up front. Some songs, as a listener, don’t work at all like this such as “The Audience Is Listening” as there’s not much backing music. Again though, this wasn’t really designed for listeners like me.

I had fun playing a few simple melodies over some of Steve’s slower songs.  Some of these stripped-down tracks will also make good beds for voiceover recordings.

At this price, guitar players are getting a lot of music for their dollar. They might never play or use some of these tracks but you can’t argue with the value (about $20 Canadian).

For players, you’re going to get a lot of use from these CDs especially when you download the sheet music from Vai’s site. Vai writes arrangements that will give you a lot of challenges and fun options to play over. For the average listener such as myself, you will only play this occassionally. It will definitey give you insight to the songwriting and recording talents of Steve Vai, and maybe you can use the tunes to just chill out as background music at home. At this price maybe that is enough reason for non-players to buy it. Only a guitar player will truly get maximum use for this box set, and I think they will use it a lot.

3.5/5 stars

Note:  Steve has available on iTunes two more discs from this series:

  • Where the Wild Things Are/Sound Theories
  • Story of Light

22 comments

    1. Probably, although I’m not really tuned into that world. This is the only one I totally know. I have some demos/bootlegs of other bands that can be used similarly.

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      1. George Clinton put out a whole series of CDs with Parliament/Funkadelic bed tracks under a “Creative Commons” license and told everybody-“Sample away”
        I’ve got the “Atomic Dog” one.

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        2. Always the genius promoter… just as the first rapper’s trax using his stuff starting coming out, his Prince-produced LP “Hey Man, Smell My Finger” dropped. Led to a whole new era for the P-Funk!

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  3. This is a concept that’s been around for years, at least as far back as my first drum lesson (February 1975), called “Music Minus One.” I don’t know of any other artists who have done this specifically for their own music, which makes this Vai set seem really cool. It would probably only work for artists whose following largely consists of musicians. The guys in Dream Theater should consider this if they haven’t already.

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  4. “Hair brush!
    Oh! what a hair brush!
    (it’s not that he requires grooming!
    Guys with light blue hair never do!)
    Then she did explain:
    There’s another game
    That we can play with this device,
    And then a banana!
    She said it was dry
    Stevie won’t you try
    To drool a little drool on it
    And grease the banana…”

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