I am a Grammy Award-winning career musician who has been actively playing and recording for almost three decades. AMA.

Everyone is dying to know, of course, what is your stance on file sharing?

Specifically, sharing digital music albums online.

Also, what will it take for you to mail me your signature guitar? Thanks in advance. :)

re: file sharing - I think that everyone has to ask themselves that question and act according to the dictates of their own inner moral fiber. I don't judge anyone but I will say this. Musicians work hard to make their music and it's very expensive to do. The only way they can eat and continue to make music is if they can get paid for their work. Musicians are slaves to their creative instincts. Having said that, if I you are a teenager and struggling through school, have no money to spare, I mean seriously no money to spare, and you are a Steve Vai fan and would like really really much to have my new record but you just can't afford it, it would be OK with me if you shared it. But only you can determine this because frankly, we get away with nothing as we are all bound to the law of cause and effect, (Karma). Me giving you the OK to do it will make it OK. But, if you have really no problem paying for it and you download it for free... shame on you.

I started my career on the Accordion by the way...

Has Kanye West ever interuppted an acceptance speech of yours?

If I tell you that then it will really give me away.

Does having a grammy get you laid?

Perhaps some of us.

Who are you?

What category did you win the award for?

If you won't tell us who you are, can you at least tell us if you are a known person, or if you are a writer or something.

I won the "best rock instrumental performance" category.

You won this twice, am I right?

And you are on promotion for your new album.

That promotion brought you to the Colbert Report last week.

And someone on the Colbert Report staff is a Reddit user and made you aware of how awesome Reddit is.

And if I'm right up to this point feel free to admire my awesome powers of deduction when I reveal you are a member of the Flaming Lips.

Nice try, but I won three Grammys actually. Best Rock Instrumental (two times). Best instrumental pop album as a producer.

Now, that was too easy Steve :-)

So what brings you to reddit?

Have you been here before today?

Full disclosure. I don't know the first thing about you since I'm from the other side of the Globe. But it's an honour to have you here.

you figured it out!

http://www.favorednations.com/vai/vai-reddit.jpg

after a bit of cursory research, the only person i can find that fits that criteria is steve vai. if so:

hi steve :3

well done!

http://www.favorednations.com/vai/vai-reddit.jpg

What was the difference in your career, as far as everything goes, between having no record contract, and being in a record contract?

Before I had a record deal with a major label I was making real money.

That's what I would think. But, what about fame. Did it make a difference?

Being famous, at the level I am at, is fun. I like it and yes, it can help when it comes time to let everyone know you have a new product out. I can still go out and not many people bother me and if they do they are usually very respectful. But in the end I feel as though I have a job just like everyone else. The important thing is putting our best foot forward and doing the finest work we can regardless of the field we are in. In that respect we are all equal. A famous person can do a worse job than a street car conductor. Our effort and intention is the thing that is measured at the end of the day, not how many grammies we won. But it's still nice to be a little famous.

Can you play Kansas - Dust in the Wind for me?

Only if it will potentially win me another Grammy.

• do you write the songs or play what others tell you?

• were you in a single band the whole time, or are you more like a studio musician?

• has this made you rich?

I have been everything.

Couple of queries on your pre-Grammy days & post-Grammy, may we??

• How do you solicit jobs on upcoming productions (as a source of livelihood), and what's is the ballpark figures you could get then & now (pre/post award)?

• Does attached suffixes (union memberships?) really help in soliciting contracts & are they compulsory in entertainment world?

What union are you referring to? The musicians union? What kind of contracts are you referring to? There is a plethora of various contracts in the music industry.
The only compulsory contract that I know of in the entertainment industry is for a mechanical license.

A mechanical publishing royalty is the money paid to the publisher of a song for any kind of mechanically manufactured unit that the piece of music exists on, such as a record, a CD, etc. Luckily for publishers, recently a law was passed that allowed downloads to be subject to mechanical publishing royalties. There is a statutory rate in place for a song. It various according to the length of the piece. Today it's $.091 per track but it is re-evaluated every January by various mechanical rights societies.

If you re-record an existing song, or any song, you need to obtain a mechanical license from the publisher. The publisher can not deny you this license. That's why it's a compulsory license.

The only time a publisher can refuse is if the song was an original work for a theatrical performance or if the performance of his/her song veers very far off the track form the original.

And then everyone gets stoned.

I'll be happy to take some more questions but they will have to be questions I usually don't answer. Let's see how creative you can be. And, if you really want to impress me, figure out how I took that photo and tell me what you are actually seeing in it.

Were you a member of Toto?

No but a good friend of mine was.