Vai's first solo album, "Flex-able", began his career as a solo artist in 1984. During the period of time that the album was recorded, Vai was heavily influenced by his previous tenure in Frank Zappa's band. Originally not intended for release, "Flex-able" expressed a certain creative "quirky" and "angular" freedom in the eclectic nature of Vai's writing style. Passion and Warfare, Vai's second solo album, expressed a more mature and evolved "signature" style but retained a certain freedom of unfettered inspiration that would continue to influence Vai's future releases. In speaking of his inspiration, Vai has said that it comes to him in many forms (even from the flowers pushed up against a fence outside of his studio, which he transcribed and used in the ninth track "Weeping China Doll", from The Story of Light"." While expressing that he is not continuously inspired, Vai uses a concept he calls "musical meditation" to enter a state of consciousness that he calls "The Ultra Zone". When inside this un-critical frame of mind, Vai is able to achieve inspiration in the form of musical ideas (often in forms of melody or rhythm). For these moments of inspiration, Vai created what he calls the "Infinity Shelf", a drive of thousands of snippets of song ideas that he has collected over his entire career. These esoteric principles are taught by Vai during his Alien Guitar Secrets masterclasses, among a host of other information.