Welcome to Music Matters Podcast with Daryl Craig Harris, talking about all things music with celebrities, artists, music business insiders, and more. Michael Isaac, how are you doing today? I'm doing good. I'm so excited to be on here with you, Daryl. Thank you so much. Well, thank you for joining me. You're coming to us from a New York, city but you're an LA guy originally is that correct originally yeah I'm born and raised in LA moved to New York in 2024 uh for school yeah that's quite a transition as we know the New York is fun and there's of course tons of energy there and a lot of great talented musicians of course too so you have a a single that was just recently released March 6th called Hold Your Keys that's from your debut album because I think you had an actual EP out before correct right right right right this is my first um studio recorded album uh project so and then your yeah your full album the debut album the carpet maker comes out on the 15th so that's coming up that's not too far away such a cool album i was checking out um hold your keys and and some of the other tracks and i love the sound because it's a mixture of cultures and vibes tell me about uh how you approach writing this album because it's different than your your other tracks that you've released previously? Totally, yeah. I mean, I definitely, I started with a very kind of, not to say run of the mill, but definitely very inspired by indie folk artists and alternative singer-songwriter music. And so when I first started putting out music, that was definitely the vibe I was going for. I went through this period in around 2022, 2023, where I just kind of got back into my roots a little bit and just started remembering a lot of the music I listened to in childhood. My parents are from Egypt. Both of them were born there. So I grew up hearing a lot of Arabic music, and I love it so much. And I knew I wanted to do something with it. And every time I tried, it didn't necessarily come out super well. And I think it was because I was trying to force it a little bit, and I wanted to really sound different. Yeah, sound as authentic as possible. Exactly, yeah. And so what I ended up doing is I ended up taking the time to just really like immerse myself in the music. And so I didn't write for a while, but I just kind of like wanted to take this period of like learning and immersion. So I started just like listening to the music nonstop. Um, Umar Khalsum, Abdul Halim Hafez and like all of the artists that like my parents would show me growing up. And then I also started learning how to play the Oud, the classical Arabic instrument. And that totally changed the way that I wrote songs. And so I would start on guitar and then start messing around with Oud. And then I have my really good friend Sohail who wrote my new song Hold Your Keys with me. and we would just jam and something would, this new sound I feel like was kind of born from those jam sessions and just really letting the moment come to life. Yeah, and that's, I mean, you know, the thing is that in the Western culture, I don't know if that would be really the term, but we're not as familiar with Egyptian music, although it's always been around, it's hovering around what we hear because it actually has influenced a lot of artists And that culturally, the music is so rich and goes back thousands of years. So it's really fun to hear a different take, a modern take. And also you kind of talked about the modal systems, too, which is kind of musician jargon. But talk a little bit about that and how it differs from what we're typically used to in Western culture, that just a different vibe of those scales and the modal thing. Totally. Yeah. So definitely like the main thing that differentiates Arabic music from Western music or like Western classical music is the existence of microtones. And so those are pitches of notes that you can't necessarily play on the piano because they exist between notes. And so when you have a fretless instrument like a like an aoud, there's nothing separating. You could play any any pitch whatsoever. You're not limited by what we're considered as Western. Exactly. And so the Arabic scales, they're not really scales, of course, because they're used in a different way, but they're called maqamat. And basically what you do is there's a certain vocabulary with them. And so it's kind of like a whole sense of being in itself. You get kind of enveloped in the world of a singular maqam. And part of it is also how you stay within one and then explore another. And so I was really inspired by that in terms of how you can create this sort of modulation and changing the feeling from one sort of mode to another. Yeah, and it's exciting. And there's a lot of, and also too, in that world, of course, there megastars that are extremely well that we never heard of necessarily here but they just as valid as any other I often said that too I used to play with a bunch of Chinese pop stars and these were people that had a billion followers or whatever, but we had never heard of them here. So there's obviously amazing music around the world. It's nice that you're kind of making that combination and bringing it up to kind of a modern vibe with what you're doing. Tell me about making the album, because was it super collaborative, or how did you do that? I think it was pretty much self-produced from what I read. Yeah, so all the writing was very personal and very like me and my friend Sohail, who was mainly helping me with composition on the Ode. But for the most part, I mean, I was writing the songs over the course of the last two years. When it came to recording the album, a couple of my friends who I met in the city opened a recording space in Chelsea called Laurel Road Studios. And so this was the first time I got to record a project in a studio with, you know, a session engineer. And we had actually a team. So for the most part, it was me, Finn, who is engineering, who's the session engineer, and then Sohail, who is there playing the Oud. And then I got kind of a few of my friends and collaborators to come play. One, we had a violinist, my friend Olivia. We had, and so it was a nice vibe, just also just bringing in my friends to like record, you know, parts. Yeah, it makes it more of a sort of a family experience. Exactly, totally. So, you know, I'm part of this Arabic music ensemble at Columbia where I go to school. And so basically I got to meet so many other musicians who were also fascinated with Arabic music. And so I got a couple of them to come play percussion and violin. And another good friend of mine, Remy, who plays guitar in the city with some bands, is also super fascinated with this type of music and saw it as a really cool opportunity to expand his sort of palette as well. And so, yeah, I think it was a good mix of personal and community effort. And it was just super fun. you know, being in the studio and recording everything. Everything just felt so, like, organic. Yeah, and it's nice to kind of build a team and have a team of people that you trust, because it's all about building trust, especially studio, because studio can be very stressful at times. And you kind of feel the joy and the vibe in the music, and I think that that's exciting. So tell me about, so you're going to Columbia. What are you studying at Columbia? So I study history, but particularly I'm very fascinated with music and culture and how that functions in certain historical periods. So I've done a lot of research on, specifically in the Middle East, how music has functioned in certain cultural and political histories. Yeah, and that's, I mean, that's obviously a very deep topic. it's really exciting that you're able to kind of bring that to what you're doing musically because it obviously has the effect on on mixing the different styles and the different vibes who are some of your early influences in terms of songwriting like where who were you listening to as a young kid definitely um sufion stevens was huge for me in high school um it was also around the time i found jose gonzalez um and i absolutely love his music i'm seeing him in concert next month so I'm super excited for that. It'll be my first time seeing him. In high school I was a big fan of Phoebe Bridgers as well. She's been a huge influence to me throughout this whole period. And then from the Egyptian side, I never really saw them as inspirations to my songwriting until recently but then I realized how much I really listened to them growing up. Um Kalsum, Abdel Ha'im Hafez, you know, where I had this song that really inspired my first EP a lot called Fium Willela. It's this song, this kind of long, you'll find in Egyptian repertoires, these like long 45 minute songs that are almost like these operas. So Fium Willela is this song in English, it's called In a Day and a Night. And it's about this, how one fell in love in the span of one day and one night. And the music is just so beautiful. And yeah, so tons of influences from a lot of different directions for this project. Arabic music, is it kind of based on improvisation or is it very, very rigid? How do they approach music? Because I know in India, you know, I was in India last year. I know they're very improvisational within a certain structure, but how do they look at music? So it's largely improvisational. in these types of operatic songs that I'm talking about, there's a little bit of less improvisation. But I think there's still this mix of, you know, the singer can have this freedom to like go off and do... And they can find certain riffs. Exactly, yeah. And then the orchestra will just be able to follow along with them. They kind of have this intuition. I think that's what I love about Arabic music too, is it feels very alive. Yeah like very fresh It not just regurgitating the usual stuff Totally And so for the song Hold Your Keys the first half of the song the first minute and a half is an improvisation on the oud by my friend Sohail And I think in Arabic we call it a taqseem. And it literally comes from the word to cut something up, like to divide something. And basically a taqseem is basically when you take a little bit of each thing and kind of make something really cool out of it. Slice and dice. Exactly. So starting the song with that and subsequently starting the album with that, I think it really puts you into the mood of what we're getting into. And also just, it feels like serious as well. It gets you really into this, in Arabic we call it tarab, which means it's this kind of enchantment with the music. You kind of get enveloped into the sound and into this world. and it's also like brings you to this kind of spiritual state a little bit. Yeah, kind of a nirvana kind of going towards that, trying to get there. Yeah. Yeah, it's such interesting music and of course the culture is fascinating. You play guitar, but do you also play oud? So I've been learning how to play the oud for the past year, year and a half or so. I haven't played it on the recordings yet, but I hope to get to that point. yeah because that's and then people of course they study that their their entire life to get it's like that tabla going back to india that's kind of the uh it's it's like a lifelong uh trek it seems totally totally and i'm i'm willing to put in that time um it's it's been it's really totally even changed my way that i play guitar to this day it's really um changed my my perspective on songwriting in a lot of ways. Yeah, it kind of opens up the borders of what you can do, right? Because in Western music, we have pretty fairly strict, you know, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge. We have very strict things, but there's a lot of other stuff out there in the world. As you know, especially studying musical history and related to that, you kind of see that. Tell me about collaboration. How important is that for you? And are you writing songs usually by yourself or you're collaborating with your guys? Right. Yeah. No, it's very interesting because I've never really functioned with collaboration in one particular way. You know, with writing lyrics and writing my songs, like I usually start by myself. Like I find that when I'm with another person in the room, when it comes to writing a song, I feel like maybe there's this sense of like personal quality that kind of gets lost a little bit. And so with that, I love to at least start everything by myself and kind of come up with like, what is exactly this about? Because obviously it's hard to agree on that with one other person. You have to do a bike committee is a challenge. Totally. And so, but when it comes to composition, when it comes to, you know, jamming the songs out, and maybe you could explore this way and, you know, getting feedback from your friends, getting, you know, more ideas. I think musically, I love collaborating because especially when you have more than one instrument, then it opens up so many more possibilities. the title track for the album The Carpet Maker I had written back in 2023 after a trip to Egypt that I went on and I think I was very naive at the time too and I think it's nice that I'm leaving it in there to kind of show my progression from where I was but I think with that song um you know it seeing how it developed since i first wrote it it wouldn't have been where it is now without that collaboration um with all the kind of changes that i made over time um the different kind of introductions of the of the ode to the song and um yeah so it's i love collaboration personally it's really great yeah and it's always had a good to have um extra sets of ears and eyes and kind of you know you kind of oh i didn't think about that so that's that's why people having a strong producer can really help you because it can, it can find maybe things that you didn't even know existed in the song or possibilities. Right. Totally. Yeah. I think, um, cause I've always, uh, worked with producers and, um, it w it was awesome for this project that Finn, uh, the session engineer, like did function as a co-producer in a lot of ways. Um, even though I was the one who had to like kind of call all the creative shots, which was also really, you know, not an easy thing. Uh, That was my first time, you know, really taking that role as like the, you know, self-leading producer. Right. But to have Finn there as somebody who could bounce ideas off with me during the recording process was so important, especially somebody who knows the, you know, who knows the extent of the equipment and of the space that we're recording in. That's super important. Yeah. And again, it like helps kind of broaden your perspective and maybe broaden the sound, which is cool. It fun to like you know hear the beginning from the demos until the finished thing and hear like the progression is kind of exciting right Yeah totally totally Do you have any live shows coming up Yeah I have one planned on April 19th It's going to be at Berlin in Lower East Side, New York. I'm playing with a really good friend of mine, Chris Pina. He's a singer-songwriter from Lebanon. He's also releasing an EP that day. And so I'll be opening the show, and I'm super excited for that. Awesome. Yeah, and it's fun to play live, too, especially in New York, because there's such a cool broad audience there. Yeah, I also want to say, too, that the sound that we've been talking about and collaboration, I feel like a lot of that does develop in the live set as well. Getting to play these songs with Sohail countless times in front of small crowds, it's great. I mean, it really gives you a feel for the way that your music is coming across. And so I think like I never want to like come out with a song without playing it for people first and kind of seeing what they think and how they react. Yeah. And it's just nice to get the feedback because when you're kind of writing in your room and you're like, I think it's good, but it's nice to play it for public and get the feedback and see what they think. So talk about a little bit about songwriting and young artists advice that you could give to people maybe listening to this. Because I know you're obviously you're kind of still getting started, but you've had some albums out and some singles and you're immersed in the New York scene as well, which is very vibrant. Talk about maybe a little bit of advice that you would give to younger artists, younger musicians that want to maybe kind of follow that path. Right. I think my biggest piece of advice would probably be to not just listen. Like, let's say you want to make a certain type of music. It's super important that you don't just listen to that type of music, that you listen to all genres and find really things that can inspire your music and things that you don't necessarily expect to. And that goes for all forms of media as well. I mean, watching a lot of movies, go to art exhibits, read books. I think like I, you know, before I went back to school full time was reading so much. I really wanted it was part of that immersion project to like, I really wanted to absorb like all of the literature that was written around the times that like my favorite artists were performing. And so yeah, I think literature is super important to me. I think there's a quote that says like, good writers read, you know? So I live by that as well. Also being in school, I have like a, you know, access to so many, so much stuff to read. That's one of the best schools in the world too, Columbia is, that's impressive for sure. I think like the amount of stuff that's been inspired by school indirectly, I think the fact that I know so much about what I've studied and gotten to learn that expertise, and also understand the context of like what what this music is and what it's all about i think that's really helped me inform um this album and and how i make music yeah it really helps flesh out the story and and and your music is very story driven which i like and i also it it kind of reminded me especially the earlier stuff reminds me a very soundtrack kind of vibe in the indie soundtrack which i which i love that genre it's it's it's exciting um and the production style too with the the heavy verb on the vocals, just that whole vibe is really cool. Yeah, no, I definitely, like, definitely want to take people on a journey. That's always been my, that's always been my goal. Yeah, well, that's a good goal for songwriters, for sure. To let people know how they can find you and if they want to check out your release and schedule live shows and all that stuff. Totally, yeah. So my, everything is on my website, michaelisaac.us, and that's Isaac, I-S-A-A-K. you can always follow me on Instagram as well Michael Isaac Music and that's my handle on TikTok and YouTube as well yeah awesome well I encourage everybody also to check out your Spotify and that they have a lot of your newer stuff, your singles on there but there's also a lot of older stuff that's really cool and you can hear the progression which is kind of what you were talking about which is always exciting sorry real quick my stuff is also on Bandcamp as well And if you want to directly support artists, Bandcamp is an awesome platform to make donations and also buy music from the artists directly. And also hear things that I wouldn't put out to the public if you want to request anything. Yeah, and that's great. And we definitely want to support artists and help them make a living, which is good. That's a good thing, for sure. Everybody, please check out Hold Your Keys. That's already out on all streaming outlets. the new album The Carpet Maker comes out May 15th and I encourage everybody to please check that out and go follow you on your social media pages exciting thank you for joining me Michael I know you're a busy guy especially with school and music and everything so I appreciate your time no I'm so happy to be a part of this and I've had a great conversation I'm so excited for the music and I'm so excited that we got to work this out awesome hey have a great day Michael thank you you too bye okay bye bye bye Thanks for joining us and please consider subscribing to our podcast and follow us on our social media pages for guest announcements.
