Derek Sherinian comments

Derek’s comments on ACoS:

It was the first recording for Suffern New York. 23 mins long. I remember the Roland JD 800 synth. David Rosenthal brought the keyboards and helped with programming. Iremember liking David Prater, the producer. Rest of the record was excerpts from live concerts at Ronnie Scott jazz club in England.

Derek’s comments on FII:

I was so excited to make this CD. I had just spent all of the previous year playing Kevin Moore keyboard parts on the “Awake” tour-this was my opportunity to make my mark, so I wanted to kick ass.

The writing started in January 1996, in a rehearsal room in East Rutherford, NJ. I used to take the N line subway from 34th street in Astoria, to Times Square -- Then transfer to the NJ transit to rehearsal. This took an hour and a half 5 days a week. John Myung was kind enough to drop me off on the way home, as he had to travel all the way to eastern Long Island NY.

The writing sessions started of strong, we worked on a couple of Petrucci ideas at first, then we started working on my “Lines in the Sand” riff. I was happy that they were utilizing my ideas. We also wrote “Metropolis pt 2” during those sessions- I actually have the rehearsal tapes that show the genesis and development of the composition.

Unfortunately, Elektra records had different plans for Dream Theater. I remember going with the band to the Elektra offices, and the label obviously wanted Dream Theater to cross over and be more commercial to sell more CD’s. They told us to go back to the drawing board.

So we spent about a year in the writing studio. The band ended up choosing Kevin Shirley to produce “Falling into Infinity” at Avatar Studios in Hell’s Kitchen, NYC (formerly the Power Station). Kevin just enjoyed recent success producing Aerosmith, and he had a very easy going, but ready-to-work vibe about him. After he heard all of our demos, he put them in pro-tools, and sliced and diced them until he was happy with the arrangements. I liked most of his edits, but Mike Portnoy hated the edits. I could see that Mike was slowly getting more depressed as time was going on, as the creative control that he had enjoyed in the past was slowly slipping away.

To commercialize matters even more, Kevin Shirley brought in Desmond Child to co-write on the song “You or Me.” Now Desmond is a great songwriter, but for Dream Theater......come on! Mike Portnoy’s hair was turning grayer by the day.

Also, during this recording process, we didn’t have any management, and were being sued by ex-managers. We actually showed up to writing rehearsals, and were served papers by our ex manager Jim Pitulski (who ironically is now my label president For InsideOut Music America) It was a bit like the wild west.

Finally, the CD was complete. I immediately moved back to Los Angeles (Thank god!!!) after FII was done.

I think that FII has some good moments, but here was a lot of negative reaction from the hard-core DT fans about this release. It was more commercial designed to cross over-but the crossover songs were not strong enough to breakthrough, so the result was a lot of unhappy fans. I was very unfairly blamed by a lot of fans for the result of this CD. All I can say is that it really sucks replacing an original member in a band, because no matter how hard you try, you will always be under the microscope.

Fast facts:

* Mike Portnoy and I both quit smoking cigarettes at the beginning of the writing sessions, and to this day I haven’t smoked. The last time I talked to Mike, he still hadn’t smoked either.

* Del Fuvio Monks was the background vocal section comprised of John Petrucci, Mike Portnoy, and Myself. Underneath the surface the Del Fuvios were a secret organization based on Mockery, Bitter Diatribe, and Sardonicism. We were so fucking brutal, it was unbelievable--

Derek’s comments on OiaL:

Live record in Paris. I remember that on the euro leg we couldn’t bring all the gear and I brought 2 Korg Trinitys and also I remember it was really exhausting with 3 hours shows and played really well...there are no keyboard fixups on that performance This was recorded at the Bataclan in Paris , France in 1998.

Fast Facts:

* There are zero keyboard “fix ups” on this CD- totally live and raw.

* This show was documented in the Video “5 years in a Livetime”

Derek’s comments on PX:

I remember being on tour with Dream Theater in 1999, and Peter Mortricelli from Magna Carta Records approaching me and asking me if I wanted to do a solo CD. At first I thought that he was joking, because it is an ongoing joke in bands that when someone proposes an unpopular musical suggestion, the response is, “That’s great-save it for your solo album!”

Mike Varney (who is CO- owner of Magna Carta with Peter Morticelli) suggested that I check out this new up-and-coming drummer Virgil Donati. I went down to Virgil’s rehearsal space in North Hollywood, and was immediately impressed with his technical prowess. We wrote “Apocalypse 1470 B.C.” of the Atlantis trilogy on our first day of writing/jamming. Two months later, we had a whole CD written and were ready to record.

I recently did a session with fretless bassist Tony Franklin, and called him to play bass. Virgil brought in his fellow aussie Brett Garsed to play guitar.

Mike Varney also gave me the suggestion to buy my own ADAT studio so I could overdub in the luxury of my home, and have something to show for my recording budget-the birth of the Leopard Room!!

After we cut the drums on 2” tape, we transferred the drums to ADAT domain, and completed the remaining overdubs at the Leopard Room.

It was my first day of keyboard overdubs that I got the conference call from Dream Theater telling me that I was fired. No one likes to get fired, but I knew that I was hardly the weak link in that musical chain.

BOOM!! I am now a solo artist.

Virgil and I ended up forming a band called Planet X based off of the sound we created on that CD.

Derek’s comments on Platypus:

At the time, there was a bunch of Dream Theater related side projects happening. Mike Portnoy and John Petrucci had LTE, and Platypus was John Myung and my side outlet.

We recruited Ty Tabor(King’s X) on guitar and Rod Morgenstein (Dixie Dregs) on drums. We recorded the CD in Milbrook, NY. I love that studio up there, Millbrook Sound with Paulie Orofino running the board.

We spent one week at Rod Morgenstein’s house writing the music- (not a lot of time) and then cut the basic tracks up at Millbrook which has dorm style housing.

I remember John Myung kept trying to pitch this song riff to us that was a bit weak, we politely acknowledged it, but quicky would go on to something else. He would keep trying to disguise the riff, or wait a few days thinking that we would forget the last time he tried to pitch it to us - very funny!

Fast Facts:

* I came up with the band name “Platypus”.....I am not sure this is a good thing!

* Rod Morgenstein was one of my musical heroes growing up, as I was a Dixie Dregs fanatic.

* I have not seen one publishing cent from the Platypus releases...Where is my fuckin’ money???

Derek’s comments:

This is the second Platypus CD. This was a weird CD to make because I was freshly fired from Dream Theater, and I had to go work with John Myung. Again this was recorded at Millbrook Sound.

I remember that while we were in the writing stage at Rod’s house in Long Island, I was staying with my old friend Al Pitrelli, who lives near by. One night, Rod, Al and I hung out at Al’s house and had a great time laughing hysterically- I was excited about winning the Metal Edge keyboardist of the year award, and Al said, “ Congratulations, now you can join Tommy Lee, and Eddie Van Halen for that prestigious award!” HA HA HA.

I did all my keyboards at the Leopard Room with Ty Tabor engineering.

My highlight is :”The “Yoko Quintology.” - Actually the correct term is, “Pentology,” but I prefer quintology.

I recently ripped a CD of only the instrumental songs on both Platypus CD’s.

Fast facts:

* I have seen no royalty, or publishing money for this release....