SOAD and the Double Harmonic Scale

SOAD is an acronym for System of a Down, which is a band I have recently started to enjoy.  At first, they did not seem to be up my alley, but after listening to some of their music without knowing it was them, it was really interesting to hear.  The one thing I took away is they are very creative and musically gifted.  The thing they do that is my favorite is their use of Double Harmonic Scales/Phrygian Dominant scales.


While these are two different scales, they are very hard to tell apart because the difference is a sharpened 7th.  They also originate from the same region, the middle east.  This shouldn't be a surprise that SOAD uses these scales since they are all Armenian-American.  I like the fact that many of their songs have a very arabic and exotic feel to them.  This first video is probably their best example of their use of Double Harmonic/Phrygian Dominant scales.  


You really get the feel of it being an exotic song (especially in the chorus which goes "aerials, in the sky...").  This is not by any means an easy scale to play especially when you use the "arabic scale" style of the Double Harmonic where the scale is divided into either 17 or 24 equal parts (instead of the normal 8 or 16 parts).  Another good example of SOAD's use of the exotic Double Harmonic is their song Toxicity




While it is not as powerful as in "Aerials", it is definitely noticeable.  

I will leave you with two last songs that use the Phrygian/Double Harmonic scales.  The first is "Hava Nagila" which is a traditional Jewish song.  Jewish music uses the Phrygian Dominant that is why it has a similar exotic sound to Arabic music.  The second song is misirlou.  It was made famous the movie Pulp Fiction and shows that SOAD is not the first band to take this style of music and try to make it popular (turning it into a surfer style song).