Emil: What’s up? This is Emil
Eyal: This is Eyal.
Emil: And we are in Daath and this is a song called Sharping the Blades. I grew up listening to a lot of jazz fusion which a lot of people, some people that shows pick out the fact that hey you know there’s a gypsy jazz sounding, you know, gypsy jazz influences I can definitely hear it playing was pretty much true. Lately, I’ve been listening nothing but just Jimmy Rosenberg, Berilla Green, Diango Ryneheart, guys like that. And you know, when I, at first I hooked up with Eyal here, you know he writes real creepy riffs and very interesting harmonies at that time. And I was like okay, this is challenge for me. You know, I couldn’t just sit down and blaze up or something because I wasn’t a 251. It wasn’t some progression. So I made a decision to try and seek out a style that was a bit more universal that I could apply to Daath. And what kind of came about was gypsy jazz has the same sort of harmony going on for the most part. And there’s a lot of diminished ideas as well which is another reason why the gypsy jazz thing works out so well. But, other than that, you know I grew up listening to, you know, Pantera, Zach Wild, you know, Dime Bag. I mean you can clearly hear my playing, you know, that I’m Baton Dime Bag riff, you know. The guy is one of my favorite players. And then we moved on to a more obscure style metal like Sin Naked Death, things like that, and you know, which is awesome because it just so happen to be on tour with those guys right now. And it’s like really cool. And then because of that, that was kind of a gateway that opened me up into more fusion based players like John McLaughlin, Pat Mathiny. And of course, going to school and studying jazz had a heavy influence as well as a lot that rocking shouters were like a little pissed at me because I didn’t really try very hard to learn eruption because I was kind of over that. You know, I want to learn how to do bebop, how to sound outside, things like that. so pretty much that the next Daath records should be that my playing should probably get a little bit more weird than more chromatic, more passing tones, things like that. That’s pretty much where I come from as a player.
Eyal: I’d say that my initial influence wasn’t even metal or guitar, it was classical music. I started playing the violin when I was three and the piano since four and I did that up until I was ten. And that’s where my foundation comes from, it’s all classical. It’s when I started playing guitar then I was thirteen, I didn’t do the blues thing and the jazz thing, none of that. It was transcribing violin solos on to the electric and then trying to learn mighty famous stuff which didn’t exactly worked out.
Emil: Didn’t work for me either very well.
Eyal: Yeah, it was really laughed being fourteen trying to pick out the hanger 18 solos, it’s just not happening. Just not happening. But over the years, I got into some guitar players like the stock shredders like Mounsting and whatever. But that never really stuck with me, I'm just not really into guitar music. I mean, I am more of a composer, writer than a natural player. I just view a guitar just a tool for my writing. So I did a lot of work transcribing orchestra pieces, figuring out really complex songs by bands like the Beatles or Silver Chair or whatever. And have just tried to apply that to my own playing. The whole shred aspect of whatever we do, I think is just part of playing in the style of music. You got to have the vocabulary to make it through to whatever genres you’re in. so to equip myself with what I think are the basics did make it through. But it’s never been about guitar, it’s more about writing an expression for me.
So I would say that me and him are completely opposite which actually is part of why we work so well together. What you’ll find me learning on guitar these days is I’ll pick out a muse record and transcribe all the piano parts on the fret board for a Silver Chair record. Figure out all the changes and then apply that somehow to Daath. I don’t know how it works, but it does.
Emil: Kind of just comes out. It pours out eventually.
Eyal: Exactly. I don’t really think about it. I schooled myself when I was like 18 to 22 and I learned all the theory and all that stuff I had to. Then I really made an effort to forget it all. That’s actually what they told us to do in school to, is that you should forget it. So by this point, I pretty much forgotten it all and only play by ear. But it seems to be serving me much better than when I was in theory land.
Emil: A lot of times I'm thinking metal in general because you're dealing with the root and the fist and that’s it. A lot of the stuff from what I was saying earlier was the chord extensions is that he comes up within a solo section or if we wrote a solo section together. A lot of these things kind of lock me in to certain tones and stuff and I like that because at that way it guides to the solo versus you sort of winking around. Because the worst thing for me is solo in something like. You can only dig so deep into that, I think. It’s too much room for everything. So for Daath, the chord extensions are very, we typically just kind of go, is this sound evil enough? Should we sprinkle on some more evil? That’s the pretty much our favorite thing.
Eyal: It’s very, very hard to talk about it in theoretical terms.
Emil: It is.
Eyal: Even though it all works, it’s hard to define exactly how it works. And I have a lot of people who went to school with me or who went to school at some point who just know their shit as far as theory goes who can't figure out why it works because it doesn’t fit in with the textbook. But they just know that it does. Kind of like there's sound check composer Danny Elfman, he’s a really good example of someone who writes that way.
Emil: Yeah.
Eyal: All his stuff works. But sometimes it’s very, very difficult to figure out what's going on harmonically because it’s so out there.
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