("Aerials" by System of a Down) - I never considered myself to be like a technical guitar player. When I play the guitar I'm
kind of hearing the whole song, vocals and everything
that's going on in my head so it's the tool that I
use to structure songs to write songs, it's also a way
for me to just get away from my world and go in my little room and I don't really play guitar
in front of people too much. Obviously when I'm on stage, but when I'm at home it's
usually when I'm alone so it's kind of like an
intimate thing for me. ("Aerials" by System of a Down) I started collecting records
when I was like maybe four. I would always drag my
Mom to the record store. I don't think I picked music,
music kind of picked me. I can't remember a time in my life that I wasn't interested in music. I don't know where I would be without it. Its just kind of what has always
been a part of my identity. Music has just been
something that's there. Its always been something
that has been important to me. ("Aerials" by System of a Down) I grew up in Hollywood in a pretty small one bedroom apartment. Until I was 11 years old I
always wanted to play the drums. That was something that since I was a kid, I always wanted a drum set, but in that small
apartment that I lived in we couldn't fit a drum set. So we finally moved in a
house when I was 12 years old and I was like, "great, now
I'm gonna get my drum set." We went to the music
store on my 12th birthday to go get me my drum set and my parents had a
discussion amongst themselves and said, "you know, you
can't turn off the drums." (laughing) So they decided to get
me a little amplifier. It was an amp by a company called Gorilla and they bought me a guitar,
it was an Arbor guitar, and so that's how I
became a guitar player, was because my parents
couldn't turn off the drums. ("Aerials" by System of a Down) The influences when I was a
kid were more heavy metal. Sabbath, Ozzy, Slayer
was a big deal for me. But a lot of metal stuff
made me want to learn how to play those riffs. But as I grew my tastes change as well so that's why I say as a
kid it was the metal stuff and as I grew up and went into the Beatles and a lot of other, you
know, Grateful Dead, and all kinds of other stuff that are influences of mine now. But at that time it was
just a lot of heavy metal and I was always just trying
to find the heaviest metal and at that time, which
was like the mid-80's, metal was evolving so there was this, if you wanted heavier, some band would come and
give you the heavier stuff. ("B.Y.O.B." by System of a Down) I've always played Ernie
Ball strings from the get go because Ernie Ball you could
buy at the record store. I'd go buy a bunch of records and then I'd buy a set of strings and that's how I started
playing Ernie Ball strings. I used to play super slinkys
but now I mainly play the, is it the heavy top light bottom or is it heavy bottom light top, it's orange! (laughing) That set, that's the one I play. But I've just always played Ernie Ball strings from the get go. ("Lost In Hollywood" by System of a Down) I've never practiced guitar
a day in my life actually. That's what I always tell people, they're like, "did you ever practice? "Do you practice a lot?" I never felt like I was
practicing, I was just playing. And I only played when
I felt the itch to play and it was calling me, and
it's still that way now. ("Lost In Hollywood" by System of a Down) Writing-wise, I'll usually
come in with a structured song. I like to write in verses, choruses, very traditionally structured actually. Verse, chorus, verse,
chorus, bridge, chorus, out. But what I use for the verses
and choruses and bridges, I tend to look at music with colors, like an artist would look at colors. I have a lot of different tastes in music. I don't ever say it only
has to be heavy metal. That's kind of why the
music I write with System or even with Scars, it's diverse. Even in one song, it'll
have a heavy metal part and then it'll go into a
whole different type of thing because I'm not afraid
to use different colors, different moods, there's sometimes humor in my writing. I'm in different moods so I use the color of the
moods I want to express. ("Lost In Hollywood" by System of a Down) I feel like I have a certain style. I don't know how that happens. But I always try to add to that style, I don't just try to stick with it. I always try to add a certain color that maybe I didn't use before. If you want to talk
about the System albums, they evolve in that way as time goes on. In the first album it was more heavy metal
and anger, I think. And I think because we were
playing the clubs at that time on the first album and I was
just trying to write songs that were going to get the club going, get a mosh pit moving, and then we started playing bigger places and it wasn't as intimate. I started going more into
a songwriting direction and started getting more influenced by songwriters instead of riffs. People like Bowie or Neil
Young, The Beatles, The Kinks, and that type of stuff started
bleeding into my writing with songs like Lost In
Hollywood, Soldier Side, ATWA, my songwriting started evolving
into more of that stuff, into more melody, and I just wasn't afraid to try that even though it might've been
something we never did before. But it was honest, it was just honest, it was where I was as
a writer at that time and I just felt like if it was honest, people would get it. ("I-E-A-I-A-I-O" by System of a Down) I think there's something
cool about the guitar as opposed to sitting on a keyboard. I don't know, there's just some kind of, stand up, play it, it almost becomes an
extension of you on stage. Different guitars look cool, SG's, different guitars have
different looks to them, you can't really do that with too many other instruments either. Shapes, a violin is a violin. You're not going to have a
million different shapes, flying V's, guitars have so many different characters you can express yourself by
the way the instrument looks. Almost sometimes you can tell just by the way the instrument looks what kind of guitar player the guy is. I don't know if you can
do that with turntables. Like flying V turntables. (laughing) (heavy metal riff) I like to inspire. I think that's what it's all about, is leaving something for
someone else to pick it up and take it and do something else too. That's how I became a
musician, people inspired me. As a kid, I had musical heroes and posters on my wall
of bands that I liked and those people inspired me. And I think that's the way
it is with every kind of art, you leave something for
someone else to take it and be inspired to do something else and keep the evolution, or keep the art, keep the music moving. I'm very lucky to have been able to play in a band that touched so many people and if one of those people came out and became something and did something and they were inspired by something I did, then that's pretty much
what it's all about to me. (heavy metal riff) I get a joy out of doing what I do. It's kind of selfish, I write
the songs I want to write, I play the style I want to play, I've never tried to cater to
anything that's popular now, let's go into that thing, no, there's never been a label head-person telling me to play or write
in a certain direction. The music I was writing when we got signed was at that time, for especially
people in the metal genre, it was weird, kind of, people didn't know what to
make of four Armenian guys. We weren't playing Judas
Priest style heavy metal, we were playing, what it felt
like, was totally our own. Nobody ever made us do anything different. That's something I appreciate a lot, that I've been able to express myself and write the songs that I want to write, write about the topics
I want to write about, sometimes serious, sometimes silly, sometimes sad, sometimes happy. I feel like I don't have any rules and I think people who listen to my music expect that from me to some degree. As an artist that's a
freedom that I feel like I'm not afraid to try things. (guitar solo) Every song feels like it
has a different flavor to it and I feel lucky that
I'm able to express that. It's not just one dimensional,
I feel like, my writing, and it keeps me interested. If I was just playing straight death metal I'd get bored. If I was playing electronic music, and just electronic music, I'd get bored. I wanna play music that is like death metal, electronic,
country, folk, Armenian, Arabic, whatever the hell, it's
all there in my writing and I feel lucky that
I'm able to express that and people accept it. ("Chop Suey!" by System of a Down) Everything that I listen to, everything that I write, is all kind of in my subconscious and it kind of gets pulled
out when I least expect it. I don't pull from anything, it kind of gets pulled out of me. The Armenian and Arabic kind of stuff is just where my family's from and it's what I've grown up around. That kind of music isn't even what I would put on in my room, but when I went to a wedding
that's what would be playing. If I went to family gatherings that's what would be playing so it was in my world, it was in my culture, it was in my life so it kind of bleeds out of me without me trying. ("Chop Suey!" by System
of a Down) Toxicity? A comedian can get up on stage and tell jokes. If they're not genuinely funny, and if they're not genuinely honest about what they're saying, chances are he's not
gonna touch the audience, he's not gonna get laughs. And then there's that person
that just doesn't care whether you laugh or you don't, and that's probably the person that's gonna probably
make the whole room laugh, they're just being themselves, they're just funny themselves. I try to be that honest
with my songwriting at the end of the day. I've gotta love it, I gotta really love it if I'm gonna convince you to love it. So I've gotta be the first person that's a fan of that song and I've gotta really love it. That's worked for me. Through my career, that's worked for me. If something that I wrote touched me and got me excited it's usually gotten the fans excited. (guitar solo) (heavy metal riff)
