For the Love of God is a miracle of songwriting. As rare as a perfect storm, this piece has such an array of beautifully crafted parts that blend together into a breathtaking whole. Form the opening melody onward, this piece just pulls you in. You have to digest it in small parts though. So with that said, we will first go over the simple melody that serves as the foundation of this superb piece.

em>For the Love of God seduces your ears right from the start. The arangement of the sitar serves as a hypnotizing background for the simple elegant melody. Vai embellishes upon this method as the song progresses - he starts with a serene style of playing and with each passing measure the energy builds, culminating at the spectacular solo section (which we will cover eventually).

Above is the tab for the first 18 measures. In this lesson, we stop at the end of measure 16. I based the above tab off some powertab files I found online and modified a couple parts to suit my tastes. I didn't change any notes, just decided to play them elsewhere.

These opening measures are played with the neck pickup and feature slides throughout. In the next measures, Vai repeats the melody, but switches to bridge pickup and executes bends in place of slides.

There is certainly nothing difficult about this song's melody. The audio clip for this lesson is from a recording I made of the song. I suggest you listen to Vai's recording. You can find it on Rhapsody.

In a future guitar lesson, we will go over some of the other more challenging parts. For now, master the melody and play it with conviction.

Later,

Brian