JaM Progductions!

On August 16th 2002, I had the opportunity to sit down with Mike Portnoy and John Petrucci to discuss the production of Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence. Considering that I’m currently studying audio engineering at the local community college, this was an extremely fun interview to conduct and was very educational. I mean, how often does one get to pick the brains of the pro’s in an effort to apply their personal experience and knowledge to one’s own repertoire? What follows is the interview as it happened. I would first like to extend my heartfelt thanks to a few people that made this interview possible, as well. Great thanks to Mike and John; it was a blast and I learned a lot in such a short time! Thanks as well to Rick for setting it up, and to Nicole for getting me in touch with Rick and making the road trip with me! And now, on with the interview!

First of all, could you walk us through the production process a bit, for instance from music concept, to structure and mapping, to execution/recording, etc.?

MP: Well, in this case actually, for this album and the last album, there were occasions where the production directly affected the composition. In the case of something like Disappear, a lot of the composition and orchestration was done on tape. So basically, we started with, on that song for instance, just a piano track, or a guide track, or just a click track with the arrangement, to decide what the arrangement would be. But it was the production on it that really brought it to life, you know. Whether it’s a backwards cello for this verse; we’ll use a crazy distorted guitar on one side and a harp on the other side for that verse. So in a song like that, which was a very experimental thing sonically, the production side of it had a direct effect on the composition and orchestration. But then there’s other songs like, you know, The Glass Prison or a lot of Six Degrees where the music and the band’s performance and the composition came first. I don’t know if that answers your question, but it’s just something that came to mind.

Are there any direct steps you guys took to plan an approach as to how it would be done, or was it more spontaneous than that?

JP: We kind of know, as we’re writing a song, the direction of it and where we want to take it; what type of song it’s going to be. And since we know that and the structure, we know where it’s going to go production-wise at the same time. It’s sort of a planned approach. We might not know specifically that we’re going to put cello on one side, but we know that “hey, this one we want to be a little bit more sparse; a little more psychedelic” maybe have some very subtle changes. Or we might, with something like The Glass Prison, say we want this one to just be like [kung!] (tenses up briefly to imitate aggression). So we’re going to write it that way, we’re going to produce it that way. We’re gonna go for sounds that are convincing in that direction. We know that ahead of time, like I said; we have to be real specific with how we get there with, you know, the style.

So it just kind of comes together as you’re going along, outside of the basic skeleton, that is.

MP: A lot of time I think, the lyrics will dictate a lot of the ear-candy, as well. I know for me, any of the songs I write the lyrics to, I usually hear movie samples and things like that. If you look at any of the lyrics I’ve written in the past, which would be like A Change of Seasons, or The Mirror, or maybe Home. For me when I write those words I have a lot of visions as well, so sometimes the lyrics come from and are inspired by the movies like Dead Poets Society for A Change of Seasons or, you know, The Mirror has a whole bunch. So sometimes those samples will work their way into the production, and that kind of ear-candy is one of the last things to be sprinkled on top. Then in the case of Home, when we were writing a concept album, there were a lot of visions in the lyrics that we wanted to bring to life, and sound effects as well, to help tell the story; to see into the story. The same thing goes for the new album; most of the lyrics I wrote have those kinds of sound effects. I don’t know what it is; maybe it’s just the way I think, personally, when I’m writing the words. I also have different ideas. Goodnight Kiss has sound effects like the kids and all that kind of stuff. That’s just my thinking, I guess, maybe because I’m so into movies and stuff like that. Whether they’re inspired by a movie or whether I want to take you into a movie-like direction, a lot of those production ideas are kind of the last things to be added to the songs.

The first thing we noticed (in a general sense) is the effects processing. There’s all sorts of crazy stuff going on in there on basically everything. Every once in a while there’s places where the mix seems to drop out to a relatively clean state, but overall, there seems to be something wacky on everything. Also, everything is moving, which is definitely very cool! So, where did a lot of that come from?

JP: Some of that stuff actually goes down during the recording process. It works in one of two ways: one is that we record specifically, with an effect in mind. Knowing that something is going to go from this speaker to that speaker, we record it that way, or that this guitar part is only going to be over here, so I record it that way. Uhmm, I think that kinda gets the motion that you’re talking about. The other way is something where we over-record, this happens a lot with the guitar and the keyboard, where it’s multi-multi-layered. Then when the mix comes down, we can sort of pick and choose what we want and with what sound we want to lead. That’s something that has to do with the mix. Yeah, that’s something in the way that Kevin Shirley mixes, where he tries to make it multi-dimensional, regardless of where you sit, whether it’s in front or back, or to the side or whatever. It’s that kind of busy feeling.

Yes, definitely! One of the things we noticed, specifically with the guitars, was that in a lot of places they start out in mono and slowly move into stereo, then drop back center to mono.

JP: Yeah, exactly. Each thing is for a certain effect, you know, it’s all for drama. If you’re dealing with something that you want to focus on, whether or not it has to do with a lyric, or just a musical effect and you want it to open up and explode, that kind of imaging is important. Since the guitar is such a prominent instrument in our band, it’s always in the forefront of the mix and when you change the guitar perspective, it drastically changes the mix.

MP: It’s probably most noticeable on the guitar, but really, it’s that kind of movement that’s on everything. You know, the keyboards, Jordan does a lot of overdubbing and tracking. A lot of the sounds are just naturally stereo as soon as you pan them. The vocals, you know, we tried to process them and get interesting with the panning on them. Even the drums, from the perspective that there’s so many drums and sound effects. That kind of stuff, I think, is really important.

Yeah, it makes it a lot more fun! It’s almost like a Hendrix album on crack [with his experimental approach] [MP/JP chuckle] except that obviously you guys know what you’re doing, whereas Hendrix was like (gesturing like I’m twiddling pan knobs randomly) “Oh, this sounds kinda cool”. Anyway, going through some of the songs, starting with The Glass Prison, there’s an interesting bit in the first half where James’ voice sounds like it’s way over here on the left and then your voices are sort of swirling around all over the place, which is a very cool effect.

MP: That song has a lot of processing on the vocals. Plus, it’s very heavy, and in order to make James’ voice (he’s got a very clean, sweet voice at times) sound heavy without him straining or screaming, which we wanted to avoid, there was a lot of processing involved. For instance, in the first verse, my vocals are off to one side clean and his are distorted, then switching back and forth, he then comes into the center clean. On the second verse, we put his whole vocal thing through a flanger and had it panning left and right throughout the entire thing, which is exactly what the keyboards are doing. So the keyboards and vocals are both flanged and both panning left and right, then it cuts straight up to the chorus. On the third verse, myself, John and James are all switching off vocals, so you have me hard left, James’ vocals hard right, and John is up the middle. This way you can differentiate the three different voices as well.

I also noticed that on a number of places James’ voice has a live delay, one of those really heavy delays that you usually only find in a live situation, which was really interesting. You don’t hear a whole lot of that, from a vocal standpoint, on albums.

MP: Actually, I think that if it were up to James, he’d do every single part of every single song that way; he likes that !

Oh, really!

MP: Yeah, we usually have to fight him on that, actually! If it were up to him, it’d be the whole album that way. [grins]

That’s really interesting, because that’s one of the first things I noticed when I first started listening to the album, just how much is going on with his voice. It’s kind of funny because most lead vocalists hate to have anything done to their voice. You have to fight them to do it.

MP: James used to, in the past. We usually had to fight him on it, but this time around, I don’t know what happened! Maybe he’s just happy that he’s able to do whatever the fuck he wants to with Mullmuzzler [all laugh] and so when he comes to us, he’s willing to be more open-minded, who knows. I don’t know what it is, but suddenly, this time around, he’s been very open-minded about it, you know. I mean, we’ll say, “Hey, we’re gonna squash your voice here, and put it through the distortion box there...”

JP: Actually, well no, there were a couple of times when it was a little overkill and he was like “Oh, this is too much...” I remember, at first, we had his voice really distorted, just [makes a distorted hissing noise]. “Ahh man, this is just a little over the top” so we backed off a little bit.

With regards to Blind Faith, there’s a place right around 8:30 or so where they’re going all over the place, and it’s hard to tell if it’s a delay, because it sounds like it’s almost the same thing on multiple tracks. It’s going all over the place, but the second is right along with it.

JP: Are you talking about maybe the organ solo? ‘Cause that has a Leslie effect on it that’s probably swirling... ? [trails off]

MP: What about the guitar and keyboard unison?

JP: Yeah?

MP: Do you remember how that was processed? I don’t remember.

JP: Uhmm, that was pretty straight forward.

MP: Just you on one side and him on the other?

JP: It might not even be; it might just be straight up to that.

MP: Around 8:30? The song is ten minutes, so it’s probably right around there.

JP: Yeah, and sometimes Jordan and I double stuff a lot. And you know, if we’re hard-panned left and right, you hear it very clear, but sometimes we’ll do it where it’s just straight up and it’s one on top of the other, it choruses a little bit.

It must be the organ solo, because I seem to remember a pretty distinct delay, rather than something you would get from just a long chorus.

JP: Yeah, I believe it’s not a real Leslie. It’s simulated, I mean. It’s Kurzweil stuff.

It was a neat effect, because I remember it kind of jumped out.

MP: That was, if we’re talking about the same thing, Keith Emerson soloing on top of Metallica. I remember we said when we wrote that; “This is what it would sound like if Keith Emerson was jamming with Metallica...”

[all laugh]

Let’s see, with Misunderstood, obviously a very important part of the intro was, as Brad was describing it, this kind of slap-delay into an echo on the drums. It was interesting because it sounded like it was on basically the whole kit.

MP: Uhmm, if we’re talking about the same thing, then it’s just on the snare drum.

Just on the snare?

MP: Yeah. In fact, I overdubbed all those drum parts, so my full kit doesn’t even kick in until the second chorus. Everything at the beginning, like the Octobans, the small hi-hat, the snare drum and the echo and delay, those are all overdub. In fact, when we do that live, we’re not going to do it tonight, but when we play it live, you can hear it.

JP: It’s actually a cool thing on the intro. The vision was for the guitar to have a delay that was off to one side going into a filter, so as the delays decayed, the filter would close. We actually did that, but going into Jordan’s keyboard and he was manually closing the filter as I was playing, so that was cool. Also, the first chorus has a very sparse kind of arrangement. The bass is really distorted, it’s like massively fuzzed out, there’s this bass/cello mix, and then there’s a very distant direct guitar synth going into an Eventide harmonizer that’s in a backwards echo.

Another thing on Misunderstood, that Brad and I were talking about, was that it just sounds like in a number of different places that it’s low, almost as if there’s a frequency range in the midrange that’s missing. He suggested that perhaps it was slightly over-compressed in the mastering, but that it might have been on purpose. It almost sounds like there’s a little hole there, it’s interesting to hear.

JP: Hmm, if so, it was an accident!

[laugh] It was just something interesting that we noticed, but?

JP: I guess Kevin was doing something that...

MP: Actually, I notice that kind of thing on a lot of Kevin’s mixes. I’m not anal with that stuff; I think John’s got much better ears than me when it comes to that kind of stuff, but I’ve noticed, in mastering and stuff like that, there’s a lot of that kind of stuff. You know, I don’t really say anything about it.

I chalked it up to maybe the low frequencies?

JP: It could also be from when the kit changed to the half-speed.

MP: Uhh, probably not, but that was another interesting thing, too. The drums for the middle section and the ending section, I pictured them really sludgy. We just sped the tape up all the way and I played along to it, like [imitating drum pattern with voice and hand slaps] DUM DUM da da DUM DUM, ba da ba DOM DOM. It was like half speed and then we slowed the tape back down to give the drums this sort of real sludgy kind of sound, that sort of half-speed thing.

Yeah, I noticed that on the way up here.

JP: Every time it did that we used a baritone guitar, so that also had that effect. It almost sounds like a distorted bass.

MP: And then John’s got the backwards guitar in this song and Jordan’s got the panning. There’s a lot of ear-candy in this song. Misunderstood and Disappear were conscious decisions. We consciously made them very psychedelic, with a lot of ear-candy. The whole idea was that those two songs could have easily been treated like Hollow Years, Through Her Eyes, or, you know, Another Day. They could have easily turned into this kind of power ballad, but we consciously took those two songs and completely tucked with them, [grins] and you know, made them as obscure and wacky as possible.

See, and that’s one of the things I love, though, ‘cause it’s always fun to hear all sorts of strange stuff on an album.

JP: Like a nose solo? [laughs]

With The Great Debate, around 5:40 or thereabouts, there’s this kind of light, high-pitched, fluttering kind of noise in the background that sounds like it’s reacting to James’ voice?

MP: If that’s what you heard, then I bet you it’s the keyboards.

JP: Yeah.

MP: There’s a lot of... like during all those ‘Tool-sections’, there’s a lot of cool keyboard shit going on.

That’s kinda what we figured, but we weren’t quite sure if it was an effect on James’ voice or just kind of an echo in the background from the keys.

JP: That was another conscious thing when it kind of crosses over to part-orchestration and part-production where, if there was a very heavy, driving section and we didn’t want the keyboards, for lack of a better word, to ruin it, we also didn’t want him playing these domineering chords, so the best alternative was to use some sound effects, which is more like an industrial kind of approach.

So it was more him actively doing it rather than maybe just running the vocals to a...

JP: No, the vocals had nothing to do with it.

MP: If we were looking at the sort of different things that would offer that kind of feeling, it would probably be keyboards.

Yeah, because it kind of sounds like it’s following what he’s doing with the voice.

JP: We didn’t do anything like that with the vocals.

MP: One cool thing about The Great Debate, which I thought was a great idea, was to run the first verse through the left side and the second verse through the right side, because it matches the political idea with the left wing and the right wing, and then to the center for the pre-chorus, which is more matter-of-fact than the sound exchange. I mean, it’s a pretty literal thing, but it works there.

Yeah, the effect is fairly in-your-face and it’s pretty easy to tell what’s going on.

MP: The same thing goes for the sample, when you listen to the samples, you have one view off to the left side, which matches the first verse, and then you have the other view which matches the second verse on the other side, and then anything that was kind of neutral up the middle.

JP: Actually, when the samples are building, the first group of samples (and they’re crescending), are actually a priest on the right side and a scientist on the left side.

MP: ...and Christopher Reeve is immortalized in our song!

Another thing that I was actually wondering, with regard to The Great Debate, but also with other songs is: Where do you guys go about digging up different samples and whatnot?

MP: Voice samples?

Yeah, in this case. Or like, you guys grab stuff from the news or whatnot. There are a lot of notes on the website with regards to Awake, as well, I’d just like to know where they all came from?

MP: It’s been different in the past. For Awake, Kevin Moore was very into that. So on Awake, Kevin did his samples for Space Dye Vest, I did the ones for The Mirror, and he did 6 :00. Basically, in the old days, when he and I wrote lyrics, they usually tied into samples, so on Awake that was the case, and also on A Change of Seasons. Then came Falling Into Infinity, but I don’t think we had many samples on there. Scenes From A Memory was all stuff that was created, that was basically Jordan and I working on creating this entire movie soundtrack and coming up with the sounds. Jordan has a whole library that we could sort through and edit on his keyboard. Then on this album, [turns to JP] you did The Great Debate ones?

JP: Yeah, The Great Debate ones actually carry a whole musical section, because we had a really long build that, you know, I thought maybe would be a little too long if there was nothing there, so the samples actually almost act like lyrics and help with telling the story.

On Disappear, there’s a lot of changes from real heavy effects processing to fairly clean and straight-forward stuff. Is that kind of a tie-in with the themes of the song, or was it just kind of the way it turned out?

JP: Uhmm, no, I don’t think it really ties in with the lyrics.

It’s just kind of the way it goes?

JP: Yeah, it’s the way. You know, the ending of the song was supposed to get more straight-forward and open up to this sort of slight Smashing Pumpkins-ish kind of swimming...

MP: It’s also the only time when it really opens up to true stereo. Everything up to that point is squashed to one side or the other, and the drums are mono. It was the idea that when we got up to that final chorus, it would really open up to full stereo.

JP: It kinda does work lyrically, if you think about it, but [chuckles] James had written the lyrics away from the song and didn’t really know what was going on.

This one is kind of a goofy one... I didn’t get a chance to sit down with Brad to critically listen to the second disc, but as I was talking to him, he said “Well, even though we don’t have the time, I don’t really need to hear it, because I only have one question: how the tuck do you mix a twenty-minute-plus song?!”

MP: Forty-minute!

Well, forty-minute in this case, we had also been considering A Change Of Seasons and some of the other longer stuff. He was saying, how the hell do you mix something that long?

MP: In pieces. When we recorded Six Degrees, I believe it was four or five different sections; it worked. I mean, the Overture was its own thing. Then we did [pauses] About To Crash, War Inside My Head and The Test... I think that was about an eight- or ten-minute chunk?

JP: The overture was separate?

MP: Yeah, the overture was one piece, About To Crash, War and Test was a chunk. What comes next? Goodnight Kiss and Solitary Shell was the third chunk, then The Reprise and Losing Time made up the fourth bit, so there were four big chunks. And within those chunks, we’re cutting separately, you know, in terms of the recording process. Within those chunks, we’re punching in and punching out, but in terms of mixing, it was mixed like that.

What about when you have to go back and listen to the whole thing at once to make sure it all fits together?

MP: We didn’t! We listened to it in chunks, approved it in chunks, and then...

JP: Mastering...

MP: Put it all together in mastering.

Just let mastering handle all that, huh?

MP: Yeah, all the editing was done in mastering.

JP: It’s real easy with the computer now. Just stick it in and move it around until it works.

Yeah, that’s one of the things we were talking about when we were listening to it in class. Brent was saying that it sounds like it was done in Pro Tools.

JP: It was actually recorded to tape and was mixed analog, but Pro Tools was used. It was converted to Pro Tools files and it was mixed externally.

MP: By the way, since you mentioned A Change Of Seasons, we didn’t really have that technology all that long ago. So seven years ago when we did A Change Of Seasons, it was all analog, so in the case of A Change Of Seasons we did have to cut it together and then I believe it was mixed in one twenty-minute session?

JP: Yeah. Yeah.

MP: But now it’s much different. It’s only seven years later but technology is worlds apart from where it was not even that long ago.

Well, we certainly can’t complain about that! [all laugh] Let’s see? Really, the last one I wanted to ask just came up in the last day or so. I got the new fanzine and was reading the segment on looking back at Images And Words and of course, reading the comments about the drum sounds. I was thinking how you get all sorts of reissues that come out that have been remastered, have you guys ever considered possibly doing re-issues, going back and remixing things you didn’t like? Like in this case, going back to the original tracks and just remixing the drums sounds?

MP: Oooh, I would love that! In fact, I just started! Actually, when I supplied the fan club with the tapes for Atco demos for this latest gift that they supplied, I was sorting through my tapes and I came across some of the rough tracks from Images And Words, before Prater was triggering the drums, so it had Take The Time, Pull Me Under and Learning To Live with the naturally captured drum sounds. It was like “Oh my god, this is fuckin’ great!” This is the way I’d love to hear it!?

Yeah, because I remember you mentioning specifically that you are almost not able to go back and listen to that album at all.

MP: Yeah, I can’t. Actually, David Prater is going to be here tonight.

JP: Is he really?

MP: Yeah, I saw his name on the guest list, so you can take it up with him! In answer to your question, I would love to do that, but technically, or financially or commercially, I don’t know if it’s a reality. I mean, it’d be something that the label would have to want to do, you know, if they wanted to re-issue our catalog, but I can’t picture them wanting to undertake a project like that. I mean right now, you know?

JP: I think, before that, we’d do the first album.

MP: Yeah, if we’re gonna remix anything, we’d want to remix the first album as well. But, the difference is that we still are on a label that has the rights to Images And Words. Over When Dream And Day Unite, unfortunately, we have no control or licensing, we don’t own the rights to that any longer, but with Images And Words, at least we’re current with the label. It does own the rights to it, so who knows? It’s a good idea!

[Not long after this point, my recorder stopped. Those of you reading this aren’t really missing anything, as I basically only lost the final comments on the album as a whole and a concluding thank-you or two.]