It’s a Progressive-Rock Super Summit! Steve Morse and Dream Theater’s John Petrucci Exchange Notes On Shredding, and Their Chemistry Is Undeniable.

Steve Morse and Dream Theater’s John Petrucci stand side by side, Music Man guitars held tight at their sides. They’re looking up, staring intently into a camera lens, when photographer Nicholas Burnham gives a friendly order. “Bring them closer;’ he says, indicating their instruments. “The guitar is your best friend.” Burnham is only trying to frame the photo he wants, but he has unknowingly revealed the very theme for the interview that’s about to take place. The guitar is indeed Petrucci and Morse’s best friend, and both musicians have honored their relationship with the instrument by displaying extreme loyalty to it. No trend has been able to distract these guys from playing demanding, melodically driven guitar music. In turn, they have been rewarded with rare degrees of technical proficiency and strong cult followings.

Morse has been admired by devotees of virtuoso guitar playing ever since he appeared on the Dixie Dregs’ 1977 debut, Free Fall. Whether performing with the Dregs, the Steve Morse Band, Kansas or Deep Purple, he has continued to be an uncompromising figurehead. His latest work can be heard on two very different live albums: the Dregs’ California Screaming (Zebra) and Deep Purple’s In Concert with the London Symphony Orchestra (Spitfire). On both records, Morse once again demonstrates his ability to play even the most finger-frying passage fluidly, a talent that has inspired many guitarists, including Petrucci.

“The first time I heard Steve play, it changed my whole direction,” says Petrucci. “It really made me rethink what I was doing, and it made me push myself to be able to play that way.”

Petrucci has taken great strides to match his hero. His playing with Dream Theater, already quite astounding when the group first made an impact with 1992’s Images and Words (Atco), has only continued to develop. On the band’s latest opus, the concept album Scenes From a Memory (Elektra), Petrucci shows himself to be a complete package, playing intricate riffs and solos with steady assurance.

When the Dregs and Dream Theater went on tour together last winter, Petrucci and Morse quickly turned into something of a mutual admiration society. So when Guitar World suggested the two sit down to talk shop before a show at New York’s Roseland Ballroom, they were only too eager to comply.

Guitar World: Both of you came to public attention as fully formed guitarists with very few holes in your playing. Did it feel that way to you, and in what ways have you continued to improve?

John Petrucci: I don’t think any musician ever feels totally confident that everything is going his way. For me, the ongoing challenge has been to overcome the mental battles of playing live. You can work on technique when you’re practicing. But performing is about playing with—and off of—other musicians. It’s about making sure you can pull everything off when it matters, rather than in your rehearsal room, or in the studio, where you can make things perfect. It’s a lot more challenging to nail a live performance.

Steve Morse: From the time I started with the Dregs, my biggest challenge was figuring out how to make the transition from full-time musician to full-time working guitarist. In music school I had the opportunity to do nothing but work on my studies, practice and write. I was able to spend a huge percentage of time being productive with music, but I knew some day reality would intervene and I’d want a bank account, groceries, a place to change the oil in the car. Luckily, I’ve been able to keep the perspective that this is a lifelong career, not a career that’s in the Hollywood lights for a few years, then gone. That’s the biggest advantage of playing underground music.

GW: John, Dream Theater’s music is very guitar oriented, but there’s a lot going on between the guitar and the vocals, as well. Do you ever harmonize your lines against the vocals?

JP: Sometimes. I’ve learned to write the vocal line as the music is being written, so that it’s not like pasting a vocal on top of a completed piece of music, which we have done in the past. I’m conscious of what the song’s melody, range and arrangement is going to be as we are writing it, rather than asking the vocalist to have to adapt to a potentially awkward vocal line.

SM: I naturally think in terms of melody. In fact, the melody often comes before the chords. I’m a strong believer of writing for the people in a group. It absolutely has to fit everyone or it’s going to feel like work for them, and suddenly the whole chemistry will be all wrong. So, an instrumental song I write for the Dregs is naturally going to be very different from a vocal song for Deep Purple.

GW: You and Deep Purple just recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra. How difficult were those arrangements?

SM: The symphony made it easy. We sat down with the conductor, who was playing piano, and we ran through the music cues. Once you have those figured out, you just play the song like you normally would, with the orchestra playing behind you. Actually, playing with Deep Purple has been a wonderful experience for me. [Keyboardist] Jon Lord is happy to be in the background, but he is one of the most gifted musicians with whom I’ve ever played, and I had no idea of the extent of his genius. I hadn’t seen them play before I joined them, and I was really surprised by how good they were, though they hate it when I say that. [laughs] A lot of bands get worse with time, but these guys became better and better musicians.

GW: At what point in the songwriting or recording process do you start developing an idea for the solo?

SM: For me, a solo is whatever happens when the “record” button is pushed. I’ve tried to stick with the rule that it should always be a surprise to me.

JP: That’s amazing, Steve. It doesn’t sound that way.

SM: What you hear on the record may not be the first take; I keep going until I find something that surprises me. In fact, I often can’t transcribe my solos because they are so different from what I would normally play. But if you’re relaxed and you just keep going, you’ll come up with stuff that pleases you enough to say, “Whoa. That sounds cool.”

I generally set aside two or three tracks to work with. Once I get a decent take, one I can live with, I record a take that’s substantially different. If it’s too repetitive, I erase it. Afterward, I’ll record a third solo that’s totally different from the first two. I’ll take a little break, then I’ll come back and see which solo I like best. At that point, I’ll fix a sloppy riff or lick, but I won’t replay the whole thing, because then it becomes very hard to make a solo sound spontaneous and exciting. I want a solo to sound like I’m talking casually and not over-thinking the process.

JP: For me, it’s an ongoing process. I have written solos and entered the studio with everything completely worked out. But lately I’ve tended to go more in Steve’s direction. I’ve found that when I know what I’m playing over and where the song is going, I can come up with something really interesting even when I don’t have a solo worked out. I think it’s really cool to play through a solo several times, record it every time and listen back and decide what approach to take. Like Steve said, if you hear yourself try something new, you know you’re stumbling onto something really cool. Then you have the horrible task of learning what the hell you did so you can play it live.

GW: The art of improvisation doesn’t come easily to most rock musicians. How do you recommend that a guitarist master it?

JP: For me, there are two parts. The first is the technical part, which comes with schooling: I like to know what all the theoretical choices are, and what scales work with what chords. Then there’s the melodic concept: if I were to put down the guitar and improvise a sung melody over the solo section, what would I come up with? That’s pure improvisation, because you can sing anything you want. You are really using your ear, and you can immediately tell if something’s in or out. You’re also finding the note choices that sound best, rather than thinking, What note am I about to play? If you can combine those two things, you have a good balance, which is what I strive for.

SM: I agree with all of that, but I would add that a beginner should proceed in steps. The first step is learning what note choices would work and determining which notes would be passing notes or strong notes you could hold onto. That’s just a simple matter of learning your modes and knowing some basic theory, which is necessary and can be taught by any guitar teacher. The next step is to sing a melody over the changes. Then learn how to sing a melody and play along with it. Next, do all of that without an instrument. Do it in your mind, including the fingerings. In other words, see a virtual fingerboard. That way you can noodle away at all hours of the day, exploring things like fingerings and harmonies even when you don’t have a guitar in your hand. It becomes a way of life to the point that what you think is what you play.

This is a great way to make strides when you’re limited for time. I’ve worked out entire tunes before I ever played them. I can actually work out a harmony line in my head to the point where I can play it—but not at your tempo, John. I’d have to practice it for a long, long time to do that. [laughs]

GW: John, you’ve been very open about Steve being an inspiration. How did he inspire and influence you?

JP: Someone played me “Bash” [from Night of the Living Dregs, (Capricorn, 1979)], and it completely blew my mind. I had been playing guitar for a few years, playing stuff like Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Iron Maiden and Led Zeppelin, and I didn’t understand how it could even be a guitar playing at that speed. I thought it had to be banjo or fiddle. I thought, How can anyone pick that many notes that precisely? And it also had a swing feel, which I had heard in jazz before but never in rock. It really opened my eyes to the possibilities of the guitar.

Steve’s other big influence was in a compositional sense. I was inspired by the fact that the Dixie Dregs’ songs were all instrumental and they demonstrated how a guitar could dictate a song’s direction. Then I would go see Steve live and be floored by his command of the instrument. There was so much power and control in his playing that I felt like I was standing in front of a Mack truck. That was totally inspiring, and it made me want to play that way.

GW: Do each of you have a practice routine?

JP: My practicing is dictated by what I’m doing at the moment. If I’m on the road, I practice the music I’m about to play. A lot of our music is difficult and there’s always something I’m struggling with. I’ll spend my time with a drum machine practicing those parts over and over. But I don’t want to play too much when I’m on the road because I play harder live if it’s fresh. Also, I can blow out my hand if I practice three hours before a show, and I don’t want to run out of steam onstage.

SM: Interjection: He has the most phenomenal endurance at tempo of any guitarist I’ve ever seen. Please continue, John.

JP: [laughs] Thanks. If we’re recording, I’m more in the writing frame of mind and a lot of my playing happens during practice with the band. I end up playing many hours a day, so I don’t want to practice a lot by myself. And if the band is taking time off, then I practice as a way of maintaining my abilities. I practice all the different techniques that are involved in playing guitar. I try to change it up every day, so it doesn’t get boring, but it’s basically technical maintenance. In that stage, the technique is more important than what I’m playing, though I find that the more I play, the more creative ideas start to pop up. I look at that stage like working out; it’s all about form and consistency.

SM: I’m similar to John in many ways. Whatever job I’m doing dictates what I’m working on. When I don’t have a specific tour coming up, I like to change my routine as much as possible. I’ll practice technique one day, on the next day I’ll spend my time writing a tune and then I’ll go back to practicing technique the third day. Keeping my interest sparked is a big goal of mine. If I do too much repetitive stuff, I lose some of the fire.

When I was 15, I made a great discovery: that if I never put my guitar down until I did something that I was pleased with, I would always look forward to picking up my guitar. That’s when I really started playing seriously, and every time I worked with it, I got something good.

JP: That’s wild.

SM: Now I try to keep that feeling alive. As a result, I don’t like to do too much practicing that’s divorced from making interesting music.

GW: Is there a minimum amount of time a day you need to spend with your guitar to reach your level of proficiency?

SM: If I don’t put in two hours a day, I’m a mess. But that’s a normal two hours, filled with interruptions. That kind of time is necessary if you want to have phenomenal technique. There are lots of different ways of expressing yourself as a musician—you don’t have to be a technically great player to be a great musician. But to play any of John’s stuff, for instance, you better get to know your metronome and have a supply of picks, because you are going to wear them down.

JP: You know, I actually learned about the importance of the metronome from going to a Steve Morse clinic and hearing him talk about it.

GW: Have either of you modified your rig recently?

JP: I’m always modifying, more out of endless questing than dissatisfaction. I had a ton of gear, then I decided to scale down, and now I’m back to having lots of stuff. But my gear was scattered, and there was some stuff that I loved and so me I just liked for one specific reason or another. And I realized that I needed to have it all put together into one or two racks that I could use anywhere with ease, in the studio or on the road. Mark Snyder put it all into one bulletproof system, with a Bradshaw foot pedal. I call it my own little music store, because basically every effect you could dream of is in there. I have six different Mesa/Boogie amps, and it’s all laid out so that I hit a button and switch into any of them on the fly.

SM: I still do things the same way I always have. I plug straight into the amp and run the output into my effects. Then I mix the effects with volume pedals and run it all into a separate amp source. I just got a new Peavey 5150 Model Two head that I’m really excited to try with Purple.

GW: John, you recently switched from Ibanez to Music Man guitars. Why?

JP: I was with Ibanez for about 10 years, and I thought it was time for a change. I think we came up with a great guitar, and I stand by it, but Ernie Ball offered me a situation that I thought would be a bit better. I think what we’re coming up with will be amazing. Hopefully it will be on the market by the fall.

GW: You’re playing a version of it now. What can you tell us about the guitar?

JP: The model I’m playing now is a prototype. I’m still unsettled with a lot of things about it. For instance, this guitar doesn’t have a Floyd Rose, and I’m not sure if we will go that way or not. If we do, it will alter everything. But there are some things we know for sure. For instance, in addition to the six-string model, Music Man will create a signature seven-string, which is something I’ve really wanted to do. The guitars will definitely have the piezo pickup, which is a great, great feature; it really sounds like an acoustic guitar. And it’s definitely going to have DiMarzio pickups, though we are still working out the specs. I think, overall, the guitar will be a bit more hot-rodded than most of the other Ernie Balls: the body will be a bit bigger and the neck radius may be a bit flatter. It will be more of what I’m used to, but my goal is to make it a better instrument than the Ibanez.

GW: You’ve both told me how much you have been blown away listening to each other on this tour. Present company excluded, who was the last guitarist you heard who really impressed you.

JP: I just heard Ron Thal for the first time. This guy is really different; he’s playing some wacky stuff. What impresses me is hearing something I can’t immediately understand or recognize, and Thal’s Adventures of Bumblefoot (Shrapnel) really impressed me.

SM: Jimmy Herring is a guitarist who doesn’t have any holes in his playing. He’s very fluid and melodic. He’s the kind of guy you could stop on the street any day of the week, put a guitar in his hand, say, “Play a solo,” and he’d come up with something great in one take.

GW: Sounds familiar, guys.

Box

Progressive Rock Lives, and Here Are Four Reasons Why.

by Alan Paul

The line of concert-goers stretches from the entrance of New York City’s Roseland Ballroom, down the avenue and clear up to the next block. What could be big attraction? A new rap-metal sensation? A hip-hop extravaganza? Boyz 2 Cute, or some other fresh-scrubbed abomination? None of the above. This mass of humanity is waiting in the cold East Coast evening air to pack together tighter than sardines and marvel at the sheer musicianship of the Dixie Dregs and Dream Theater.

“In almost every city, we could have played much bigger places,” says Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy. “But the promoters under-booked us because they always underestimate us and the rabid nature of our fans. Our success is not based on radio play or MTV because we are a square peg in a round world. That so many people come out says a lot not, only for us but also for fans of progressive music. There’s a huge market of people out there, and they’re not only listening to us.”

In fact, Dream Theater is at the forefront of a new movement of progressive rock. Not only is it the movement’s most popular band, with total album sales of over three million—the group is also the new prog’s veritable cornerstone. As proof, we submit the following four bands, each of which is in some way connected to Dream Theater.

Liquid Tension Experiment

Consisting of Portnoy, Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci, keyboardist Jordan Rudess and King Crimson/Peter Gabriel bassist Tony Levin. The only uncreative things about this supergroup are the titles of its two albums for Magna Carta Records—1998’s Liquid Tension Experiment and 1999’s Liquid Tension Experiment 2.

“Liquid Tension happened when I got the opportunity to put together my dream band,” says Portnoy. “The result is basically a cross between progressive rock and instrumental virtuosity.”

The group’s first album was so successful and fun for everyone involved that, not only did they immediately agree to do it again, but Petrucci and Portnoy asked Rudess to join Dream Theater. The album also impacted Dream Theater in more subtle ways, according to Petrucci.

“When Dream Theater started out, we were incredibly enthusiastic and just wanted to play as much as we could,” says the guitarist. “Over the years, some of the spontaneous, play-as-much-as-you-can passion disappeared a bit. As soon as we started working on the first Liquid Tension album, I felt that spirit again, and Mike and I brought it back to Dream Theater.”

For more info on the band, visit www.magnacarta.net.

Platypus

Featuring Ty Tabor of King’s X, Dixie Dregs drummer Rod Morgenstein, Dream Theater bassist John Myung and former Dream Theater keyboardist Derek Sherinian. The group’s second album, Ice Cycles, was recently released on Inside Out America. While no less quirky than the band’s debut, When Pus Comes to Shove (Velvel), Ice Cycles takes Platypus into darker, heavier directions. Traces of Deep Purple, the Beatles, Jeff Beck and classic Seventies fusion can also be heard.

Myung explains how the band was born three years ago: “I simply had a number of songs on this little tape recorder, and they deserved to be heard. The first album was just four individuals finding common ground. We were pretty much strangers in the beginning, and over the course of two weeks we wrote a lot of songs. It clicked from day one, so we wanted to keep it going. We instantly had the kind of chemistry it sometimes takes years to develop.”

For more information, visit www.dereksherinian.com, www.rodmorgenstein.com or www.insideout.de.

Transatlantic

Consisting of Portnoy and members of three of prog’s best, most important contemporary bands: guitarist Roine Stolt of Sweden’s Flower Kings, bassist Pete Trewavas of British cult legends Marillion and Spock’s Beard singer/keyboardist guitarist Neal Morse. Transatlantic just released its self-titled debut on Metal Blade/Radiant Records.

“Transatlantic is an opportunity for me to play classic prog rock along the lines of Genesis and ELP, without the metal influences heard in Dream Theater,” says Portnoy. “The band is really the ultimate modern progressive rock super-group—each of the other guys’ bands are, in my mind, the best at what they do. It’s a new-millennium version of what Asia did: taking a bunch of guys from the predominant prog bands of the day and seeing what comes out. It actually came about primarily just from me wanting to work with Neal Morse. I’ve been a big Spock’s fan for years.”

To find out more, visit www.mikeportnoy.com, www.spocksbeard.com, www.users.wineasy.se/flowerkings or www.metalblade.com.

Spock’s Beard

Spock’s Beard, whose most recent album is the live Don’t Try This at Home (Metal Blade/Radiant), has been one of new prog’s most important and revered bands since the release of its first album, 1995’s The Light. Ironically, when Neal Morse formed the band three years earlier, it was strictly for fun; he had given up on having a successful career in the music business.

“I thought it was over with a capital O,” Morse recalls. “I had given up hope of making it in the music business after years of failing in L.A. as a singer-songwriter, and I just decided to play music I loved. To my surprise, I was able to get top-flight guys to join, because they all loved the music, too.

“What we do is very varied and encompasses elements from jazz, pop, rock and classical. It’s a joy to write stuff for this band because I can write a three-part classical fugue that has to be played perfectly or leave a section for a free-form solo and know that the guys can deliver the goods either way. It’s been that way since the start, and we’ve only gotten more ambitious as we’ve grown.”

To find out more, visit www.metalblade.com or www.spocksbeard.com.