On The Record: Angel Vivaldi on shredding, drag & latin jazz

Angel Rivaldi is promoting his new EP, "Away With Words Part 2," which is different from his previous work. He originally planned to release it in 2015 but held off to mature as a musician. The EP features a variety of styles, including funk, Latin jazz fusion, and progressive metal. Rivaldi also talks about the importance of visual aspects in music and his upcoming projects, including a new band with vocals. He discusses his gear setup, using Mesa Boogie amps and Axe FX effects. He encourages musicians to step out of their comfort zones and try new things. He also mentions his switch from using Ibanez guitars to Charvel models. Hi everyone, here we are with Angel Rivaldi, who's currently promoting his new EP, Away With Words Part 2. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely. Now, can you share a few words about yourself, about your work, before we begin with all the questions? Yeah, yeah. So, I'm a guitarist and metalist. I've been doing it since 2003. Fully independent, of course, so I've been label-free since 2003. And, yeah, you know, I'm really excited about this most recent record. It's very different than I think what people would expect of me, and I think very different in general of what's happening in guitarist and metal to begin with overall. And, yeah, I'm really excited to talk about it. Awesome. Now, the new EP is titled Away With Words Part 2, and it's kind of a continuation of your 2014 release, Away With Words Part 1. It's been almost a decade since the initial release, and now you're releasing the kind of sequel. Can you tell me how this came to be, and why now? Yeah, you say a decade, and I'm like, oh, God, you're right. It's almost a decade in between both of them. Time passes quickly. But I think a couple of things. You know, I originally planned to do it in 2015, but, I don't know, I got really scared to release such a vastly different record. So I think part of it was succumbing to what I thought the audience wanted, you know, because I was 10 years younger, and I was a little more immature in the sense of playing for the audience to some degree. And what I decided to do was sort of hold off on it. And maybe five years after I did that, I realized, I was like, I really just, I don't know why I played to the audience. Because when you're an artist, the reason why you have an audience, if you're lucky to have one, is they want you to do what you want to do, and I've always done that. But I think it was par for the course, because I feel within the 10 years, it allowed me to mature as a musician to a point where I can explain and express what I want to say much more eloquently, much more intellectually. Whereas if I feel if I did it back in 2015, it wouldn't have been as authentic. So I'm kind of glad that it took 10 years, to be quite honest. So, but the style on your EP is completely different from what you used to do, like, even with later releases. And, you know, but we can still notice that it's you, that it's you who has written all these songs, who's playing on them and everything else. But now, in my personal opinion, it kind of sounds more mature. You know, how did you end up changing the style and why? Well, the interesting thing was, this is music that I listen to on an everyday basis. It's music that I grew up with. So, you know, understanding how the structures of those songs are, the arrangements, you know, and playing these songs in church when I was a kid, you know, I understood what those songs really needed. But when it came to the lead phrasing, that's the part that I really needed time to develop. Because it's a little, it's like, of course, funk and samba and Latin music and classical music and all these things have existed for decades. But in the sense of, like, modern guitar instrumental music and putting that type of voice over these types of genres, it's different. And I don't, aside from, like, Al Di Meola, who does it more different, like, he does it in a more fusion sense. And, you know, my type of phrasing is very lyrical phrasing. It's not jazz in the sense that it's improvisation. You know, there's, I'm trying to tell a story. And from that perspective, it just took me forever to get the phrasing right. But the way I went about it is not much different than I would go about writing any type of music. You know, it's just sort of drumming over jam loop, you know, drum loops, you know, and just kind of making a riff, you know, not necessarily like a single note, like a metal riff, you know, but, you know, different funk things like a nine or progressions and eight. You know, doing those types of things. Of course, now the song Nine got the most attention, well, at least at this point, especially with the video that came out and, you know, we've seen some online reactions and how people were surprised by your new, not just the music, but also the visual style. Can you tell me a little bit more about that video and how that happened? Yeah, so the video is interesting. Whenever I do a video, the song tells me what it wants, ultimately, you know, so when I was thinking about that song, you know, the whole concept of A Way With Words is yin and yang. And I wanted to make sure that I'm telling that story in as many ways as I possibly can. It's a duality, you know, it's black and white, it's fire and ice, it's male and female, it's rock and acoustic ballads, it's all these different things. So for that song, obviously being a traditional funk song, there's nothing really progressive per se about it, but I knew that I wanted to feature someone on there who is different than me, you know, sort of like I did with Nita Strauss in Serotonin. But the whole concept is an inward focus, you know, so it's a matter of focusing on your inner yin and yang. And a couple years ago, as a joke, it was just for fun, I did a Charbonneau campaign for my black self, Nova, and I got in drag and we split me in half and it was fun, you know, and a lot of people enjoyed it. And everyone asked, it's like, oh, when are we going to see her? When are we going to see her? And I'm like, I'm not a drag queen, you know, it's not my personal thing to do. But I figured out, you know what, let me get uncomfortable a little bit. Let me get uncomfortable, let me get into the drag and let me go into it and feature her in the song. So then I thought about how am I going to do that? How is she going to sound compared to me? You know, and I had the hardest thing on that record was writing the solos for Nova Dyna. It was the hardest thing because the style is so different. So my style is more elegant, you know, legato. It's in some ways, you know, it's sensual. You know, it's very legato and you break the word legato apart is the cat, legato, right? It's, you know, it has this sort of suaveness, whereas her style is very like blues. You know, and I had to think like that and I had to play unnaturally. So, yeah, so back to, I guess, the main question with the video. The treatment came up with this one section. I can't remember it exactly, but. Something like that. Something like that. I can't remember. I haven't played these songs in months. But when I heard that middle section, I was like, that's exactly what the song needs. It needs this sort of secret agent, sort of spy, James Bond kind of thing. And I thought about, all right, who can play that character? Nova Dyna. So, you know, I got in drag. We broke into the bank. We jumped on a private jet. We flew to the set. It was just crazy. It was crazy. It's a lot of fun. It's definitely the craziest, most over-the-top video I've done personally. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm just going to say that I'm embarrassed for, like, I was trying to figure out who this, you know, Nova Dyna was. And I didn't realize that it was you, actually. So, yeah, sorry about that. I was trying to, I really wanted to ask you, like, who's this? And, you know, I didn't even realize. Oh, well, that means you did a good job. That means that your playing actually worked. It's obvious that you're visually focused as well. You can see that it's you. Just like in your music, we can hear that it's you. In this day and age, how important is it for a musician to also focus on the visual aspect? It really depends, because you have so many examples of people who are breaking that rule and people who follow that rule, right? With guitar instrumental music, it's a little bit different. It's a very niche genre, right? And I think that when you go back into the behaviors of the listeners, you get more insight on what to do. And if you need insight into the listeners, look at yourself, because all guitar instrumentalists, we love the genre. We love listening to it. So we can kind of go by what we want to see. It's an opportunity to set yourself apart, right? Because I feel that the visuals and the videos that you do, and even the kind of person you are online and the person that you are in general, it influences how people listen to the music. And I feel like if you can sort of paint the whole picture and sort of check off every box of being an appealing human being and being an appealing artist and a visual artist, you have a better shot of people wanting to get to know you more and then get to know your music more, I feel. Now, back to the EP. I think 8 is my favorite, I mean, from both EPs. This whole second part, the second EP, is a departure. But in my opinion, this one feels like the biggest departure. As a fan of like, quote-unquote, boomer music and boomer kind of guitar playing myself, this feels like an early jazz fusion piece, almost like speculating here about Spiral Gyra, in a way. What inspired you to write this piece, and what's the background here? Yeah, so this sort of... Because I feel like when you're into progressive music, we love so many different types of music, and we all say, oh, I want to do a jazz fusion project. Oh, I want to do an acoustic project. Oh, I want to do a classical project. Oh, I want to do this. So, Away With Words Part 2 is all of that. Every song is a different expression. So, when it came to 8, which is traditional Latin jazz fusion, you know, this sort of speaks to my love for Chick Corea, you know, Paco de Lucha, ELO, Spiral Gyra. Like, it's amazing. I haven't heard someone say that band in like forever, so that puts a smile on my face. But this song is the one that sort of came out the easiest for me, because I'm Puerto Rican. I grew up with Latin music, and I grew up with Latin jazz, you know, again, at church. And the only thing that was interesting was the arrangement, right? Because I'm writing for parts and instruments that I really haven't written before. So, like a horn section, right? I'm like, how do I write that, you know? So, I just sort of like, I would listen to like Gloria Estefan, you know, her horn sections, and like all these different types of, like Pipa Puente is another one. Listening to like what they were doing, because they have the blueprints that I'm trying to learn from. So, and I really wanted to work hard in making it authentic. Like, you know, I want people to think that it's Chick there. You know, I want people to think that it's Jocko on bass. I want people to think that it's, you know, all these incredible timeless musicians that are on something more modern. So, of course, Mohini Days on bass, who just did a phenomenal job on interpreting some of the parts that I had written. And then we have Mark Moody on keys. Some keys I just wrote myself, which I never really played too much around with. But there were certain things I'm like, oh, this needs to be here. This needs to be here. But yeah, that song was just like, that song's my heart, you know. And then the video sort of talks, well, the visual of it sort of tells the story of like my childhood and the kind of people that I grew up with. So, when I, so I also do the videos as well. So, when I casted all the actors, I casted them based on people that I knew, you know. So, when you see the opening scene, you see the old man playing dominoes with the younger man. And that old man, like I grew up with him, not the actor, but I grew up with that person that I casted over. The woman who drops her rice, like that was, you know, I grew up with these people. So, and then it's like the whole dance scene and dancing is a very, very important part in my life. It always has been a very important part of like Hispanic culture, you know, dancing at parties and stuff during the holidays. So, I really wanted to tell the story of like not only the vibe and the color grade and the sort of people. And also, the story is sort of based on the movie Sister Act, if you're familiar with that movie, with Whoopi Goldberg in the 90s. That's a very, very important movie to me. And the whole premise is, you know, Whoopi Goldberg goes into this church and she revitalizes the choir. And the church, no one goes to it, but when she goes in, she brings everyone together and the whole community is attending church. And it's the sort of same thing, like we're in this rundown venue and, you know, we come out and we do this new music that this venue never really heard before. And everyone in the neighborhood is like, what's going on here? Sort of. I'm going to listen to the song again after you told me everything. And I think it's going to have a completely new dimension. I genuinely loved it and, you know, I'm going to love it more now. Over the past five to ten years or so, we've seen a resurgence of kind of retro music. Like everything is going, you know, both the mainstream and underground is kind of going to the 80s, 90s, you know, even the 2000s are in some way retro. And kind of your music, you switched from kind of this progressive metal, jam, whatever you call it. And you do music like this. Will your future work go down this path or have you not planned it at this point? I have a couple of things in the works. I have started writing. I mean, I have hundreds of ideas that are neatly organized on my hard drive. I'm not entirely sure. Honestly, I always just play from my heart, whatever I feel like I want to do. The newer material I was working on recently is like sort of the traditional sort of progressive metal that I've been doing. But there's a lot of material that I wrote that didn't make it on A Way With Words Part 2 that I really feel deserves a place in my discography and will undoubtedly be released. I think the biggest thing that I feel and that I hope people leave with after experiencing A Way With Words Part 2 is that to expect the unexpected and not to have preconceived notions on what I will do next, you know. And I think there are a couple of projects. I mean, the most imminent one that I'm working on right now is I'm in a new band with vocals. So that's also very, very different. And it's a collaborative effort. And it makes me as like the main songwriter, which is even better, honestly. And I feel like even that has been in the works for a very long time. And I also have to mature as a person in order to understand the value of what someone else can contribute. So the next thing we'll be releasing will be the new band's material. And then I'll go back to the solo material once that gets released. Can you tell me a little bit more about that band and collaborative effort and how's that going? And what's it like to switch from one thing to another? Is it a challenge for you to do these two different worlds? Yeah, I think. Well, with regards to the band, I mean, we started this in 2014, right around the time that, funny enough, A Way With Words Part 1 got started. And I can't reveal who's in the band, but this is some like, oh, just legends, man. Legends. I think initially it was me as the main songwriter, but, you know, me being pulled on my solo record and my solo career and everything, I just found it to be very, very difficult. And I had to be very honest with myself for a while. I was like, no, I'm the chief songwriter. I'm the chief songwriter. That's what I do. You know, that's what I do. And, you know, I had to sort of step back a little bit and see. Like it was just this incomplete puzzle with the band. And just recently we completed our lineup. We have a new member who's just a brilliant songwriter, amazing producer, very much understands and gels with my style and the style of the vocalist and the style of the drummer. You know, and thank God it's happening now. I feel like if it would have happened too prematurely, my ego maybe would have gotten in the way and I would have just been a crazy control freak. But now I just, maybe a part of it's just getting older. Maybe a part of it's just maturing. I think A Way With Words Part 2 also matured me in some ways. Therapy helps as well, guys. You know, I think ultimately it's so much more of a liberating experience, if I'm being completely honest, because I'm not bearing the weight of all the responsibility. It's a democracy and everyone is happy because we're compatible. You know, I feel a lot of bands, they break up because they have a shared vision at first and eventually it's like a divorce. You're together here and then you sort of go separate ways. But I mean, like, you know, it's been like 10 years of sort of like working on this on and off. And now we're like really deep in it and it's becoming serious. And we see like the metamorphosis of where we started and where we're at now. I can't wait to hear that, you know, what you've been preparing for these 10 years and, you know, who's in the band. But, you know, I won't ask any more questions about that. OK, so now let's go to the gear that you're using. As far as your setup goes, like it all revolves around your Mesa Boogie JP2C+. And for effects, you're using Axe FX. I think it's Axe FX 2. And can you tell me why did you decide on this particular setup and not just using the Axe FX for like everything, you know, the amps, simulations and all that? Yeah, for a while I was using the Axe FX 2 plus on tour, like for everything, you know, and in the studio. But in spring of 2016, I visited Mesa Boogie while on the Intervals in Plenty tour. And, you know, we did a video. We shot a couple of videos demoing the Mark V and the JP2C. And I just fell in love with those amps, man. So I was able to, you know, get my hands on two of them. And just the amount of versatility, I mean, like I haven't looked back since spring of 2016. That has been my rig. Today, everything's great. The Quad Cortex, Helix, Headrush, Axe FX, whatever. It's all amazing. It's all amazing. And it's just a matter of user error. If, you know, if you can't get a good tone out of something, it's not the gear, it's you. You've got to be patient with it. I think the only benefit that one has in front of another is that how quick is it to get a good tone? You know, how quick can you dial it in? That's the only benefit for me. And I'm, as I've gotten older, especially with the way with Word Spark 2, because I had to do my entire tone. All my patches are from scratch. I started from zero because I can't use my metal stuff, which just sounds so inappropriate. So, yeah, yeah, re-acclimating and sort of rather reacquainting myself with everything else that JP2C can do, as well as the Axe FX, has just been just incredibly insightful, man. It was honestly a joy. As I'm getting older, like, I've never been like a gear hoarder. I don't like to have a lot of guitars, but I have a ton of guitars now with tons of different pickups, tons of different, like, cables and pedals, and, like, I have all sorts of gear now because I was forced to get into a place that was uncomfortable for a way with Word Spark 2. And as frustrating as it was at first, man, it was very, very beneficial. So I definitely, I urge any musician just to put yourself in an uncomfortable situation, whether it's working with other musicians, playing a different type of guitar, pick up a Les Paul, pick up a Strat, plug into an actual amp, you know, play with other people who differ from you. It doesn't mean you have to be in a band together. It could just be a one-off jam, you know. There's always something to learn about these seemingly uncomfortable experiences because I do feel that's the one thing that the modern guitarist lacks, you know. We're in our own little bubble. We're in front of our computers with our plugins. We're not playing with people anymore. You're currently using your Charvel models, and some years ago you were an Ibanez guy. So how did that change? How did that shift happen? Well, when I first started out, I was using Agile guitars. Remember the Agile guitars on Rondo Music? That was a long time ago. And then, yeah, so then, you know, I hooked up with Ibanez. We were together for about eight years. And when I had left Ibanez, I didn't have a backup plan, you know. I just knew that my time with Ibanez, you know, was up. I had gotten contacted by a couple of different, you know, guitar manufacturers. And when it came, you know, obviously Jackson hit me up, but Jackson and Charvel, you know, under Fender, and they sent me a couple of guitars. They sent me a couple of Jacksons, and, yeah, great, man. Jackson guitars are amazing. I actually just got a brand-new Jackson in with an Evertune, funny enough. Amazing guitar. And then they sent me this one Charvel. This is a DK-22. Sorry, DK-24 Limited Edition Floyd Rose Black and Red. And this was in 2017, 2018, somewhere around there. And, my God, man, I couldn't – I fell in love with that guitar. I don't know what it is about it. I don't know what it is about it. I just fell in love with this guitar. And thinking about, you know, of course people were going to expect me to go to either Kiesel or Jackson. And that didn't sit well with me because, you know, there – listen, Kiesel and Jackson, again, amazing guitar brands, and they make great builds. But I didn't want to be pigeonholed to doing just metal because I knew that I would do away with Gorge Part II, and that's not going to look right. It's not going to sound right. It's not going to be appropriate. So I kind of had to find a middle ground. And also, you know, even before I did away with Gorge Part II, you know, I released a bunch of ballads. You know, so I always sort of genre-hopped a little bit but not to this extreme. So I was like, yeah, you know, I don't think I can get away with that. But Charvel, I'm like, there's something about Charvel that's a middle ground where it's one foot old school, one foot new school. And they hadn't really gotten new school yet, but they were getting there. And I thought to myself, I'm like, you know what, man, I don't think anyone's going to see this coming. Let's go with Charvel. Let's go with Charvel because I just felt it in my heart. And I also thought about what John Petrucci did when he left Ibanez because when he left Ibanez, he went to Ernie Ball, and no one cared about Ernie Ball until he went to Ernie Ball. You know, they had Steve Morris. They had Albert Lee, and that was mostly, you know. But then when he went there, I mean, like, now they're one of the biggest brands in the world, right? He has the most successful signature guitar in the history of guitar, which is wild. Listen, by no stretch of the imagination am I going to say that I'm responsible for Charvel's success recently because that is mental and incredibly egotistical to say. However, I feel like I may have helped Charvel break into a little bit more of like the modern players, like to make people think, oh, Charvel, maybe. You know, because I think they also had Guthrie around that time too, but I don't think Guthrie was very active, like touring and writing new material or releasing records. So me being a very visual artist, much more than Guthrie, people are seeing it now and they're hearing it. So I think those two coupled together, plus in conjunction with the amazing work that Charvel just does in general, I think sort of helped revitalize the brand a little bit. And now obviously we're three signature guitars deep. This is, you know, my sixth string, the main guitar I've been using for the past three years. And they're magnificent, man. I'm just so grateful. Yeah, absolutely. And they look gorgeous, of course. Thank you. So going back to your new EP, you know, with this new release, you went from like the, let's say, shredder, quote-unquote, kind of playing to a more old-school prog rock and Latin jazz. But, you know, there's always this kind of a struggle in this past, you know, 10 years or so the term shredder has kind of even gotten somewhat of a negative connotation. But how do you think there's this, like, is it possible to find the perfect balance between the shredder side and the so-called play with feel side? Phenomenal question. I have a couple of different answers for this, and this is going to be a long one because I have a lot of opinions about this question. So I think you have to first start off with what is a shredder because a lot of people's definition of the term shred is just vastly different. For me, the term shred simply means doing something extremely well. So when you're shredding on guitar, you're playing with technical accuracy. When you're shredding, skiing, snowboarding, like I'm going to shred that mountain. You're killing it. You're snowboarding very well. When you're in the gym and you get shredded, you are extremely vascular. You look very, very muscular, right? So you have to sort of redefine what shred means. So I simply define it as doing something extremely well. So in my opinion, Pat Metheny shreds. George Benson shreds. Kaki King shreds. Mike Dawes shreds. Tommy Emanuel shreds. Chick Corea shreds. Jaco Pistorius shreds. It's more a matter of what color are they painting with, right? And is their approach applicable and appropriate for the music that they're doing, right? If your music's jazz fusion, like if you have mashed potatoes, are you going to put oregano on mashed potatoes? No, it doesn't go. It doesn't make sense, right? So it has to match. When it comes to shredders and people saying shred doesn't have feel, you have to understand, in order to shred, it takes a tremendous amount of discipline, right? It takes a lot of hours of focused, intense passion and dedication to something to do it well. When it comes to feel, people go to blues players, right? They just have feel. Right? Now, here's the thing. A shredder can play that, but a blues guy can't go. A blues guy can't do that, but a shredder can do that. Now, the reason why is because we spent so much time developing all the different colors to put on our palette, where blues players are playing with pentatonics, which are blue and purple. We have red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. We have sweep picking. We have tapping. We have string skipping. We have legato. We have all these different things. Now, I think it's the responsibility of the shredder to see if they could put themselves in uncomfortable situations in order to become more versatile, to become more complete. And that's what maturity means. It doesn't mean that you're above immaturity. It just means that you're starting at a point and you're evolving. And when you become mature, you're just a more evolved version of yourself. So it's not when I say A Way With Words Part 2 is mature, or when people say it's mature, it's not like it's better than my older stuff. It's just different. It's more of an evolved version, right? Because my old stuff doesn't go away. We can always go back to shredding. But I think that that's something different. Shredders feel more. There's more feel in shred than there is in blues. There's one or two or three feelings in blues, whereas in shred, between myself, Tosin Abbasi, Stephan Terrano, Plinny, we all are shredders. And we're all painting with beautiful colors that blues players and feel players simply don't have, in my opinion. For musicians who are making their own music and who are improvising over someone else's music, it's important, I mean, to most of them, it's important that they sound unique, that they sound like themselves. Is there a simple way, like a simple advice that you can give on achieving that? Here's the thing. I think a lot of younger players, it's different than, you know, because I'm pushing 40. My birthday is next week. I'll be 38. And growing up, my generation growing up, you know, we did all of our work, all of our development behind closed doors. We were in our rooms, you know. And once the Internet happened, it was about the time that we were ready to show the world what we worked on, whereas now it's different, where younger kids have no choice but to show the world their starting point and their ending point. So when we're starting out, what are we doing? No matter what generation it is, what are we all doing? We are emulating who we listen to. We're emulating our idols, you know. And for young kids now, that's the reason why, you know, guitar instrumental and, like, the whole neo-soul sort of guitar playing seems oversaturated. It's not that it's more oversaturated than it's ever been. It's always been that, but it's just different generations. Like, back in the early 2000s when I was playing guitar, like, the amount of people that were, like, all of us were doing nude metal and Korn and Deftones and listening to all of that stuff, as well as instrumental and dream theater and stuff like that. So that's what we sounded like at first. But now a lot of kids are obviously sounding like Ichika, you know, an incredible, incredible musician, of course, Califia as well. And it's not that it's the exposure of it that that's where people feel like, oh, I don't, like, oh, he just sounds like this guy, he just sounds like this guy. Well, you have to understand that you also sound like who you listen to at first. So I think a lot of the guitar audience has to soften to the experience and just wait until these people find their voice. And the way to find your voice is to really be honest with what you want to do. We all – there's so much music right now, man. It's the craziest time to be a musician. There is such a massive overload of music, and I feel like a lot of people are being exposed to so many different types of genres that are outside of progressive music, you know. And I feel it would be beneficial for a guitarist, and guitar instrumentalists in particular, to sort of listen to the other types of music that you're listening to outside of guitar-focused music and learn it, improvise over it, have fun with it, play with it, and also play with other people who are like-minded like you. Make sure that your red and their yellow make a nice orange, and just see what music happens in that orange and collaborate with people. But that's the best way to find your voice, because listen, no one's ever going to be the best guitarist. It will never happen. You'll never be the best at anything. There will always be someone better than you. We all are fully aware of that. The best thing to do is to be unique and to be yourself. This has not been just an interview or a podcast episode. This has been like a 40-minute lesson. Matt, it's been a huge pleasure talking to you, so I hope we'll chat again. Absolutely. My pleasure. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you.