entrevista a Jake

You came into this band through Jinxx and actually built the foundation with Christian before Andy and Ashley came into the picture. Did the sound and direction change much once they joined you?

Basically, what I had done before was write the guitars, drums and bass, the whole musical composition, but I wouldn’t do a whole lot with the vocals or melodies at that point. I just wrote themusic part of the songs. I played with Jinxx and for a while we played with C.C. as well. I would demo on Pro Tools using my recording equipment at home. Jinxx would come over and we’d write songs together and write the guitar parts together. Once we met Andy and Ashley, everything clicked and it all fit. It was exactly what I was looking for.

Andy is clearly a team leader and very much a businessman, yet he ensures that this is a band and not a solo project. Could you sense his leadership abilities early on?

Oh, definitely. The first time I met him he seemed very professional for how young he is and very intellectual. He knew exactly his plan, what the goal was and what it took to make it happen. As far as our strategy and image, he told me the first time I met him what his idea for the band was about, and was it something I was interested in. It was definitely what I wanted. He had the direction and I had the music, so it worked perfectly.

Were your previous bands in any way similar to Black Veil Brides or was this a musical departure?

I put the metal elements into my most recent band. It was more of an alternative … I hate to say … almost like a pop-punk band with a metal edge, where I had guitar solos and the vocal style was more pop-punk. I wasn’t as interested in it because it wasn’t what I wanted to do, so I was writing and recording songs that I wanted to listen to. It didn’t have to be for anything, but I ended up revisiting those ideas and most of it became Set The World On Fire, stuff I was doing after my previous band and on my own time. I was building an arsenal of music and playing what I like to play, and now that’s what this band is.

You are also classically trained, thanks to your mother. How has that helped you, and at the same time, do the discipline and technique create challenges within the rock genre?

My mom, being a classically trained pianist, showed me a lot about music theory and harmony. She taught me my third and fifth and how to have a lead line. I can use my third and fifth within the scale to create the harmony. It was hard for me to understand at first, but I figured out, “Count up this many frets and that’s where the harmony should be.” Mostly it was doing it by ear, hearing it and knowing when it’s wrong. Jinxx is classically trained and knows theory as well, so there’s a lot of times where I’ll come up with a part and write a harmony but we want it to go back and forth for thirds and fifths, or I’ll play up and he’ll go down to make it more interesting. He’ll come up with really cool harmonies, so it helps a lot having another player who understands it — and more than I do. As far as other techniques, Paul Gilbert has been a huge influence for me as far as style.

You also have production experience. You worked with Logan Mader of Machine Head and now Dirty Icon Productions. When did you begin working with him and how did that come about?

I worked with him for two and a half years with my previous band. I was in the studio with him all the time. I had gone to the Los Angeles Recording School, the audio engineering program, and it was funny because that was only about nine months long, but I learned a lot more being in the studio and watching professionals and how they do things. I learned Pro Tools on my own before I went to that school, but there were things I learned that I didn’t know properly. You pick up a lot more in the studio and the actual environment, but now if you want to work in a studio, you need that education on your resume and you have to go through an internship. I learned a lot from watching the way Logan would build drums on a grid in Pro Tools. I had never known that before, and it made writing a lot easier for me. Working with other producers like Marti Frederiksen — he has all these plug-ins and a Midi keyboard and I learned that way. Being in a studio is the best way you can learn. I don’t have a great studio at home, but I’ve got a Pro Tools rig and do a lot of writing at home and pre-production. I take my hard drive with the Pro Tools sessions to the studio and basically go from there.

What are some of your tips for recording guitars?

If you’re doing it at home on a budget, there’s a pretty good way you can get great tones. At home, for pre-production demos, I use Pro Tools Digidesign 003 for guitars. I have a Line 6 Pod XT and I spent hours and hours going though all the different amp models and cab settings and microphones and placements. It’s all digital, but you can get some pretty good guitar tones on that just plugged straight in, and you can do them in Pro Tools and fine-tune it. For demos, you can get pretty huge guitar tones. As far as recording in an actual studio, that’s everything from the amps to the cabs, the mics, the microphone placements, the preamp you’re running through, what board. On Set The World On Fire, the console was an SSL 4000. We were running a Bogner Uberschall head through a Marshall cab and I think we had one condenser and a dynamic mic placed on the cab, so on each guitar track it’s actually recording two different guitar tones and you can just build a wall of sound from that, doubling and tripling it, trying different amps out.

Is there a signature track for you on Set The World On Fire?

“New Religion” is definitely one of my favorite tracks. The way that song came together, I came up with the riff that starts out in the intro and started that whole riff around the descending fast run, that scale, and built the intro around that. When I was writing the verse, which is the pre-chorus, I was coming up with it and then I stopped and I didn’t think it was good enough. I tried to come up with more. I started moving on to the next part and stopped myself again and knew it wasn’t right. The third time, it came out the way it is now. Then I moved on, and musically it all came together really quickly. When we went into the studio, “Set the World on Fire” was the first song we recorded, and “New Religion” was the second or third song we did. We played it though the monitor, the producers were digging it, Andy and Ashley went into another room to work on vocals, and we started tracking the music and they came in with vocals and melody ideas and we started tracking.

You’ve done some instructional clips on YouTube. What do fans want to know about your technique? What are some of the areas in which young players need the most guidance?

If you want to play metal guitar, one of the biggest things is alternative picking because it allows you to play so much faster. If you’re down-picking, it’s a lot harder. Your arms get tired and you’re not going to be able to play as fast, but if you’re alternate picking you can play twice as fast. Also, learn scales. Learn the different scales all the way up the fretboard and how to intertwine scales together. The “New Religion” solo is mostly a harmonic minor scale, and then it goes into a bunch of chromatic stuff. Learn how to do all that together. And mainly, play what sounds good to you.

Have you considered an instructional DVD?

I would love to do one. I’ve done videos at home because fans always ask for them. I just play at normal speed, then slow it down to show what I’m actually doing. It seems a lot of people are asking for more, so I would love to do an instructional DVD, definitely.

What makes B.C. Rich the right guitar for you?

The thing that sold me right away on B.C. Rich was the Mockingbird shape and the 24 frets. I needed something comfortable to play and I can’t not have 24 frets because some of the solos I do are hard bends way up there, and with 22 you can’t even hit that note. And the Floyd Rose is huge. I never liked them at first, but once you know how to set them up properly and use them correctly, they’re wonderful. They don’t go out of tune. You can do dive bombs, you can break the headstock off a guitar and still play it, so that was basically what sold me on B.C. Rich.

What's in your live chain?

It's a pretty simple setup. The B.C. Rich Pro X Mockingbird with two EMG 81 pickups going through a Shure wireless. I run two Peavey 6505’s; one as a backup and one on the main overdrive channel running through a BBE Sonic Maximizer, which is basically like a suppressor. My pedalboard has a Boss tuner, an ISP Noise Decimator and a Boss Digital Delay and that’s really it. My strings are D’Addario 10 – 52, and I use Dunlop Jazz III picks.

You began on acoustic guitar when you were 10 years old. Do you still play acoustic? Is that something you’d like to pursue?

My dad bought me an acoustic guitar for my 10th birthday, but I wasn’t really into it yet. When I was 13, I got way more into music. I started listening to Metallica and I wanted to play electric, but I got the acoustic guitar out and started playing it. There are acoustic parts on our albums and I’m definitely going to do some more stuff with that. I have a Takamine acoustic at home.

Is there a guitar album in your future?

Probably not anytime soon. I would love to do that, but we’re touring so constantly that when we do have time off, it’s to write for Black Veil Brides. But in the future, yes, I would love to.

How big a part has social media played in the band’s success?

When I was growing up, you’d go to a band’s website, you’d go to their show, and that was it. You never met the bands. It was impossible to find them or meet them. Now you can go on Twitter or Facebook and write to them. Our fans write to us and a lot of them tell us their problems. I do my best to write a message back because it can make all the difference in the world and give them strength and encouragement.

Your fans are so passionate and so loyal. When you say that they tell you their problems, what are they going through?

A lot of them are being bullied. I tell them that you have to find something in yourself, find something you’re passionate about — for me, it was the guitar — and spend your time on that. Find something that will get you through. Middle school and high school, once you’re out and away from it, your life is so much different. The kids that get picked on and bullied are the ones that become successful. They’re talented. Look at us. We were bullied. You look the bullies up on Facebook and they’re working 9 to 5 jobs and they’re not happy; that’s what I’ve seen with the people I grew up with. It seems that the kids who get bullied do something great with their lives and the bullies end up living boring lives.

What is the difference between playing guitar and being a guitarist?

I guess anybody who plays can say that they play guitar, but if you want to be a guitarist, you’ve got to practice all the time and you’ve got to get good at it. It’s more than just having one and playing it.