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February 1998
7 String Summit
Korn's Munky and Incubus' Mark Einziger worship at the feet of shred lord Steve Vai.
With their dreadlocks, Adidas trainers and baggy pants, not to mention their
love of detuned, sludgey guitar riffs, Korn's James "Munky" Shaffer and
Incubus' Mike Einziger could serve as alternative poster boys. Not exactly the
kind of guys you'd think would love Steve Vai. But you'd be wrong.
"We were just talking about how you were such a huge influence on our
wanting to play guitar," says Shaffer.
"Listening to your music really helped me," adds Einziger, whose band's
full-length debut, Science (Immortal/Epic), is a dizzying mixture of hard-hitting
metal riffs, buoyant funk grooves and unusual tones and textures. "I'd try to
figure out what you were playing and hope that I could do it some day. I
haven't figured it out yet."
"Thanks," Vai says warmly, visibly touched by this praise.. "It's really an honor
to know that I've had a positive influence on your music. It's a painful job
sometimes, but if you can influence someone's creativity, it's worth it."
Munky's debt to Vai extends to the Korn guitarist's exclusive use of the Ibanez
Universe seven-string, a model Vai helped develop in 1990. The latter broke
new ground with this instrument on his acclaimed Passion and Warfare album
(Relativity), but the Universe was discontinued by the time Korn rose to
popularity in 1995. But the otherworldly sounds Munky and partner Brian
"Head" Welch wrench from their seven-strings have inspired renewed interest
in the instrument. Ibanez, in turn, has reissued the Universe and introduced
several new seven-string models.
A discussion of the seven-string guitar is what has brought this unlikely
threesome together. But as the conversation gets underway, it becomes
obvious that these players share much more than a love for unusual
instruments.
JAMES "MUNKY" SHAFFER:
It's up to the individual to determine where to
take the instrument. It's about forming your own ideas and unique approach.
MIKE EINZIGER:
It's the weird things that happen randomly, that
are almost accidents, that push everything forward.
STEVE VAI:
I believe that everybody experiences those moments, but most
of the time they don't identify them and act on them. You've got to know how
to grab that thread and go with it. A genius is a person who is filled with those
moments and makes use of them, acts on them, and does it very simply and
unconsciously.
GUITAR WORLD:
Music seems to be progressing in the areas of sonics and textures rather
than notes and technique.
JAMES "MUNKY" SHAFFER:
None of us in Korn have the technique Steve has, but that
doesn't prevent us from expressing ourselves in an interesting way. Instead of
soloing in a traditional manner, we've learned to communicate by creating
really raw and emotional sounds using new combinations of textures. I use a
lot of different effects-Uni-Vibes, phasers and wahs, as well as fuzz boxes-but
it's a matter of using the sounds in the right context and the right part of the
song. I've been playing long enough to know that you don't have to be a
technically skilled guitar player to write good songs and compose emotional
music.
MIKE EINZIGER:
A lot of new music is coming out, especially the electronic stuff
like drum 'n' bass, where people are doing amazing textural things. I'm not a
big fan of using a lot of technology with my guitar. I don't like to plug into a
huge rack of processors. I go for simple things, but I try to make my guitar
sound crazy. I go for a lot of weird, spaced-out sounds, like the things that I
hear on jungle records.
GUITAR WORLD:
Is the guitar solo a thing of the past?
MIKE EINZIGER:
No. I'm still a big fan of the guitar solo.
JAMES "MUNKY" SHAFFER:
I am too, but I never could play them the way I
wanted to. Instead of a solo, our songs have a middle part
where the whole band creates a huge, driving groove. It's cool to do the solo thing, but it's not
part of what we do.
STEVE VAI:
From the time I was a kid, my whole focus in life was to play guitar
solos. It's nice to hear players branching off in other creative directions. There
were a lot of things that I couldn't do, so that forced me to go in a different
direction. I hated the blues when I was a kid. I'd hear a classic I-IV-V blues
and go, "What is this crap?" Out of that hatred I developed this weird,
perverted type of playing. It wasn't until later on that I started to appreciate the
blues.
I was so neurotic that I'd sit on the toilet and do scales and exercises. I'd eat
with one hand and do exercises with the other. You can't expect people to do
that anymore. Enough is enough. Because now, even if they don't play perfect
notes at the speed of light, you get people doing other creative things-amazing
things. Like Reeves Gabrels and David Torn.
GUITAR WORLD:
Steve, what led you to develop a seven-string guitar?
STEVE VAI:
I was just looking for something different, looking to expand the
instrument and get a different sound. It wasn't a great revelation. It wasn't like
the skies opened up and this instrument fell down. It was just a JEM guitar
with an extra string. We tried to put a high string on it, but they kept breaking
so we added a low string instead. It works really great, especially when it's
cranked up. It really moves air. And it's not like tuning down-if you tune down
you get a light string that's flopping. But when you have a .053 string on the
bottom instead, you get that low sound without the flopping. But you guys tune
down as well, don't you?
JAMES "MUNKY" SHAFFER:
We tune down a whole step, with the bottom string at A, and we
use a .060 string on the bottom. There's still a lot of string tension so it doesn't
go out of tune when you fret it.
MIKE EINZIGER:
I don't use a seven-string, but I wanted to. I was 13 when the
Universe came out on the market. I'm small as it is, but at that time I was
smaller. I had enough problems playing a six-string guitar because my fingers
were really tiny. I remember seeing it up on the rack at Guitar Center and
going, "Oh my God! It's God! I've seen it. Can you take it down?" Of course,
the nice guy at Guitar Center was very anxious to take it off the wall for me. I
started playing it and thought it was the greatest thing ever, but after five
minutes my wrist hurt.
GUITAR WORLD:
How does a six-string player who wants to start using
a seven-string overcome the initial intimidation?
STEVE VAI:
You should be intimidated. [laughs] Actually,
it's not like a weird hybrid. To me, an hour or so after
someone picks it up for the first time it doesn't feel like a
six-string guitar plus one string. It feels like a seven-string
guitar. It's very natural. After a while you get used to it, and you feel very manly.
GUITAR WORLD:
What approach do you take when arranging music for the seven-string?
STEVE VAI:
The good thing about it is that the seven-string is largely virgin territory.
It's a new medium, so you have to rely on your own devices to be creative.
Sure, you can do some of the things that I've done, or you can sound like
Korn-you can try to, good luck-but it's not like you've got a lot of examples to
listen to. You're left to exercise your own brain power to come up with
something unique.
Right before Frank Zappa passed away, he was putting together a project that
included myself, Terry Bozzio and a bass player with this 35-piece ensemble
out of Germany called the Ensemble Modern. We were going to do all of
Frank's most difficult music. There was this one piece called "Mo 'n' Herb's
Vacation," which has really ridiculous, intimidating melodies. It was written for
clarinet, which goes lower than the guitar, so I explained to Frank about the
seven-string guitar. He got so excited because he knew I could play the
melody on the seven-string. Unfortunately, it was the last project Frank
started, and it never happened.
JAMES "MUNKY" SHAFFER:
We feed off of each other rhythmically a lot and work together.
We play a lot of parts in unison, or I'll play a steady riff while Head plays
counterpoint fills, like we do in the beginning of "Blind." But when it comes to
big, fat choruses, I'll break off and do a harmony or just play along with Head,
only an octave higher or lower. Our bass player, Fieldy, has a five-string, but
him and the drummer lock together more than anything. Me and Head do
more of the melodic things, like coming up with chord progressions and riffs.
We all work together on the groove and create this huge, massive sound.
STEVE VAI:
It's quite a sonic overload. One day I was coming from the zoo and
heard Korn on the radio. I was stunned. It sounded like a herd of buffalo
wearing iron shoes and blowing fire out of their nostrils. [laughs]
STEVE VAI:
What it will take is someone to say, "I want to play the instrument this
way." And then they'll try to build it. For example: Uli Jon Roth plays a
seven-string called a Sky guitar. It's really wicked. It's like a Strat, but it has
30 frets and the whole front horn is cut away. He wails on it and his tone is
beautiful.
MIKE EINZIGER:
When you used a fretless on your Sex and Religion album, I
actually took the frets off my guitar a few years ago and messed around with it.
Unfortunately, I ended up sounding like Les Claypool. I'll probably try
something with it again in the future.
STEVE VAI:
I've done some kooky things that involved dividing up the fretboard. I
have a guitar that has 24 frets to the octave and one that has 16 frets to the
octave, so they're untempered. They sound like divine dissonance from Venus.
And I'm working on a new triple-neck that has a six-string, a fretless and a
12-string. It has three individual outputs for three different amps. I'm writing
material where I'll be using all three necks at the same time.
I'm trying an open tuning on one neck so I can hit it in between playing the
other necks. You've got to start really slow while working things out. Then
you've got to keep focused that you're writing a piece of music and not an
ambidextrous masturbation ceremony.
STEVE VAI:
I played an eight-string, and it felt like the seven-string probably felt to
Mike. It was a little too much. I've got very huge hands and long fingers, but
there's something to be said for being comfortable with what you have in your
hands. The seven-string is just right, but the eight-string is a little too
gargantuan.
GUITAR WORLD:
How do you feel about the current state of rock guitar?
MIKE EINZIGER:
It's weird how so many people are saying rock guitar is dead. It
may not be in the mainstream right now, but there are plenty of kids sitting in
their rooms working on all kinds of wacked-out shit. There will always be
creative people out there who are going to push guitar in different directions.
JAMES "MUNKY" SHAFFER:
There still is something about a distorted barre chord that you
can feel. That's never going to away. Heavy, distorted guitar drives a band
really well-and that's no matter what kind of band you're talking about, even a
techno band.
STEVE VAI:
A certain type of person is really stimulated by the sound of clanking
strings. They may get away from it for a while, but they need to hear it. It
satisfies a void in some people. I don't know who says it's dead. That's like
saying drums are dead. It's like saying grooves are dead. Grooves are
it-they're just changing. You listen to the grooves of the Fifties compared to
those of the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties and Nineties, and they're progressing.
The guitar is one of the best instruments to express yourself with. It bends and
moves with you. And every note you hit on the thing is different. Every note
ever played on the guitar is like a snowflake-no two are the same. It's an
intimate instrument, too. When you want to play heavy and hard and feel that
distortion, there's nothing like a good dose of heavy distortion. It does
something to you. But it can also be really tender and subtle.
It's just in a different stage right now. My whole focus was playing fast, cool,
melodic and burning. The focus is different right now, but the guitar is still
there. As far as I'm concerned, it will always be there.