David Davidson, whose band Revocation just put out our number four album of the year, is not only a great guitar player and songwriter, but amazing teacher. Plenty of guys in the metalsphere and Internet-music-education-sphere have the knowledge that Dave has about music theory, but few are as clear-spoken, emotive, and cogent as Dave is. He’s also intimately aware with how theory functions in practice, which provides a fun puzzle-solving dimension to Revo’s music; the more you understand about his background, the more fun you can have taking apart their music and tracing his lines of influence and knowledge.
The good folks at Guitar World agree, and have been enlisting Dave for the past year or so to run an on-off web series, Thrash Course, in which Dave breaks down theoretical concepts and how he applies them in Revocation. The newest run, for the Deathless cycle, has so far been focusing on the Diminished scale. Check out how Dave works it in the pre-chorus and chorus of the album’s title track below:
