Jordan Rudess

Rarely do you find a group of rock musicians that are so dedicated to their instruments and the music they make that you would dare to call them virtuoso’s, that is unless you’re talking about the heavy progressive sounds of Dream Theater. Three of the five members went to school at The Berklee School of Music in Boston and keyboardist Jordan Rudess studied at the famous Julliard School in New York. Prior to making his debut with the band on their 1999 release Scenes From A Memory Jordan worked with fellow DT members drummer Mike Portnoy and guitarist John Petrucci on two excellent Liquid Tension Experiment records which sealed the gig for him to become the bands third keyboardist. While Jordan was finishing up his nine year stint at Julliard he became highly influenced by the 70’s sounds of progressive rock and got his first introduction to the synthesizer. In addition to his work with Dream Theater he has recorded his own solo records, played on many studio sessions and jammed with fellow keyboard giants such as Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman. We discussed the new Dream Theater live CD/DVD release Live at Budokan, how his live stage setup works and what it’s like to be kicked by a mad Hungarian piano teacher. He is a true keyboard wizard.

By: Ryan Sparks - October, 2004

CRR: 2004 has been a very busy year for you hasn’t it? The live Dream Theater DVD and CD just came out. Have your keyboard books been released as well?

Jordan: Yeah it’s exciting, my Total Keyboard Wizardry book and Dream Theater Keyboard Anthology are both out.

CRR: Was there a third book as well?

Jordan: No two books, that’s enough. Please tell me if you find another one though I wanna make sure I know what I’m doing (laughs).

CRR: Maybe there’s a bootleg book out there (laughs)

Jordan: Yeah maybe it’s a combination of the two (laughs)

CRR: Why did you guys decide to record another live album and why at Budokan specifically?

Jordan: Well Dream Theater has been going to Japan for quite a number of years now and ever since the beginning we kind of set a goal to one day eventually play at Budokan which is this wonderful famous arena, it’s a really, really cool place, probably the most known rock venue in Japan.

CRR: It’s kind of the Japanese equivalent of say Madison Square Gardens.

Jordan: Yeah totally and when we found out that we were going to play there, our career had finally reached a point where we could play there it was pretty clear that we should make it a really special event and capture it. It’s cool when we do these tours for us to capture the whole thing and record it and in this case we were playing a real special place and it was a goal for us that was coming true so we just felt that it was a great opportunity to go all out and do a new DVD.

CRR: How would you describe the differences in the audiences over in Japan with say North America or Europe?

Jordan: Japan definitely has their own thing. My first concert experience in Japan was when I saw Yes years ago, I was so blown away, I was a big Yes fan. The audience was clapping in unison and it almost felt that they were clapping in time. When it was quiet it was really quiet and when they would get excited they would all get excited together so it really is a very unified sort of audience. It’s very different from any other place in the world, even at Budokan there was a lot of excitement but it came in these unified bursts.

CRR: Do you find they are more reserved or more respectful of the performers, more willing to listen to the music?

Jordan: There is a certain degree of respect that goes together with the whole society and that makes it different than any other place in the world. I wouldn’t say they listen to the music necessarily more carefully than others or are more into it. I would just say that the way they behave has a certain kind of focused element to it, it made for a very kind of clean focused evening for us. My first impression after looking at the DVD was that the stage looked so clean and everything just looked so pristine but meanwhile the band is rocking so hard. It was a cool way to see us in my opinion because it was so clear and clean looking, there was something transparent about it even with all the heaviness (laughs).

CRR: Something that I found interesting on the second disc of the DVD was where you explained your live setup and how everything works. You’ve pretty much streamlined your equipment onstage over the years haven’t you?

Jordan: Yeah totally, it’s important for me to get the opportunity to explain what’s going on with what I’m doing because it really is a whole new modern way to be a keyboardist. In the past 12 years it’s changed so much and you can get so much out of one keyboard that it’s really almost pointless to spread yourself around and play all these keyboards at least in performance. These days in Dream Theater as you can see in the DVD I have a number or racks so it’s not like I’m just playing one thing on one sound source but for control I mean the keyboard player only has two hands and with the advent of MIDI it’s possible to do anything as far as keyboard players controlling that world. I can put high notes in the lower section of the keyboard (laughs), assign a different sound to every key if I want to and when I step on my program change pedal my entire layout can change and every sound beneath my fingers can be different.

CRR: During your keyboard solo spot in the concert some of the sounds you get out of your keyboard sound almost guitar like, any aspirations to be a lead guitar player?

Jordan: I play guitar a bit, I like making that wild crazy kind of lead sound on the keyboard. I’ve been developing my lead sound for so many years and I’ve finally found this cool way in the last couple of years to really get the thing to almost feel like a guitar in the sense that it’s a wild beast that can feedback and you can actually control it. That’s the beauty of the electric guitar, it’s like this thing that can take off without you and it’s hard to get a synthesizer to do that but its fun. It’s a blast to do and it really screams.

CRR: Is it a challenge as a keyboard player to keep up with the new technology that’s out there and are you always looking to actively improve you setup?

Jordan: That’s a very good question. I am completely devoted to the technology and staying progressive in terms of what I use and how I use it. The only thing that’s holding me back in live performance and it wont hold me back for much longer is the fact that I’ve invested so much programming time into the Kurzweil's that I use. They are very, very powerful instruments. Right now at this point in time the instrument that I use as the master controller is still the most powerful master controller and nothing will outdo that, in other ways the Kurzweil’s are getting outdated in terms of it’s memory configurations so I’m actively searching for how to take it to the next level live but for the moment all the sliders and ribbons that I use and things like that, there’s nothing that can compete with that. As far as the controller goes I’m still in good shape there. As an example of the way I think about technology, when I got home from touring I had a list of all the things that I wanted to check out and get into. The whole world is moving toward the soft synth, the computer synthesizers. In my home studio right now I’ve got an amazing sonic array of different soft synths and that really means I don’t need any of the keyboards in my room, I can do it all on the computer so I’m totally into using that and exploring the power of the computer. I’m really into electronic music and all the stuff like Autechre and Aphex Twin. I’m doing a lot of research into finding out how they make their sounds and how I can get my hands on that technology. I’m familiar with all the different companies that make all these products and I have friends all over the music industry and I’m more into that kind of thing than others may be. I really just put the feelers out and ask people to find out what’s going on, I read magazines and investigate. I spend a lot of time investigating and asking questions about certain sounds that fascinate me. I heard on one of the Aphex Twin records this very famous bouncing ball effect and I thought “Wow what is that?” I literally sampled that off of his record and put it into my V Synth. I started to play around with that, the Roland V Synth is very powerful and does some really cool things. That was a cool thing for me to do. There is a program called Reaktor that takes you sonic realms that are totally on the cutting edge. I’m glad you asked me that because I’m really dedicated to it because personally I think being a progressive musician means stretching out and pushing the boundaries and for me as a musician I’ve always been into sound and technology, there a side of me that loves to play piano but there’s also a side of me that loves to make really cool sounds.

CRR: Speaking of playing piano earlier this year you released the An Evening with John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess CD which I think was a really nice change of pace for Dream Theater fans in the sense that it was almost totally an all acoustic album. The initial idea for this project was yours wasn’t it?

Jordan: Well what happened was my wife and I were interested in doing a benefit for The Helen Hayes Theater in Nyack NY and I was thinking who I wanted to do this with and I spoke to John about it and that’s how it materialized. As far as recording the concert that was something we decided to do right before we did it, John and his wife were thinking it would be a good idea to record it and possibly do something with afterwards so it was a combination of both families that lead to the realization of that as a CD as we know it.

CRR: Most of the music was improvised as well wasn’t it?

Jordan: Yeah it was kind of treated as a jazz gig in a sense. We wrote the themes of the songs and left a lot of space to just stretch out and improvise which was great for us because I’m a big improviser and John likes to improvise but in the Dream Theater format until about a year ago we weren’t really doing much improvisation at all although that has changed a bit in the current Dream Theater world. In the DVD there is a whole section in “Beyond This Life” where we go into this massive crazy improvisation and we have Frank Zappa in the back ground conducting us on the screen and it gets pretty wild. John and I went out and we started to do that and then not necessarily because of that but with my coming into the band it changed a lot of things and eventually it lead to us being more comfortable with improvising so that’s something that I think we’ll see more of in Dream Theater’s future.

CRR: How would you describe the musical connection between you and John on a project like this where you’re feeding off one another’s creativity and spontaneity?

Jordan: We really found something that totally works between us and one of the things that keeps this band so unified is the relationship that I have with John. In rock music you don’t have a lot of musicians who are so dedicated to their instruments and are considered to be in the virtuoso league, you find that more in Jazz and Classical music. I think the fact that we’re all interested in having as much skill as possible on our instruments keeps us bonded on that level. When we get together and play it’s a real good feeling.

CRR: Does the dedicated virtuoso run through each member of the band?

Jordan: Pretty much. Everyone has a slightly different take on it. John Myung probably practices more than any of us. Mike (Portnoy) is more mental than he is physical. He doesn’t sit there and practice for hours and hours, if you asked him he’d say he never practices. He’s such an intense person, he’ll run things through his head, he keeps his physical chops up enough that he can do all these wild things that he’s thinking in his head, he’s a unique guy.

CRR: Can you tell me how you started out playing piano at such an early age?

Jordan: I started when I was about 7 years old and I used to play in my second grade classroom. I would go over to the piano and accompany the other kids on the songs that we used to sing. One day my teacher called up my mother and told her how beautiful I was playing and my Mother said “What are you talking about? We don’t have a piano at home” and my teacher told her “Well you better get one”. It wasn’t more than a week later that we had a piano in the house and I started to take lessons. After about a year of playing with a local teacher who would come to the house my Mother thought I was in need of some more serious study and she took me to this little Hungarian woman whose name was Magda and she would give me little kicks under the piano when I was playing scales. Her son was in Julliard but he left to go and join Guy Lombardo’s band and Magda felt like she had lost the opportunity to have her son become a classical pianist so I became like her protégé. Luckily Magda passed away before I left Julliard to join the Rock ‘n Roll circus otherwise she would have died right then and there (laughs).

CRR: Do you remember the first piece of music you ever composed?

Jordan: It was a long, long time ago. It was a piece that I wrote called My Generation you know like The Who, I remember it specifically because it was my first one that was really serious and my teacher helped write it out and we framed it. I was only twelve years old.

CRR: Tarkus by ELP really changed your life didn’t it?

Jordan: It did. I remember listening to that album in my bedroom and thinking that there was a lot of power to be had as a keyboardist. I had no idea; I hadn’t been exposed to anyone making sounds on the keyboard like that. It had such strength.

CRR: It started you on your way in progressive rock.

Jordan: Totally. I started taking little clippings and pictures of Mini Moog’s and hanging them up on my wall until I eventually convinced someone to buy me one. It was life changing.

CRR: After you came out of Julliard you started you own solo career and were voted best new talent by Keyboard Magazine in 1994 and you actually auditioned for Dream Theater around that time didn’t you?

Jordan: Yeah.

CRR: How did you come to the decision to join the Dregs and tour with them, which didn’t last long instead of joining Dream Theater?

Jordan: My wife and I had a child and Dream Theater was about to embark on a really long tour, there were a lot of different factors. I saw this chance to join the Dregs who were this cool established group and I knew I wouldn’t tour as much so I could be with my family a little bit more and I felt like it was the better decision at the time. I played a Foundations Forum gig with them but I told them that I couldn’t do anything else with them at that point.

CRR: What’s next for you at this point?

Jordan: Right now the focus is really going to be the new Dream Theater album and it’s a major undertaking getting all my technology together. I’m also working on my online educational environment which is the Jordan Rudess Online Conservatory which is a big online resource for musicians. We’re also working on monthly magazine and will be putting out the first issue next month which will be called Accent.