John Petrucci interview

Eric Bernett: I wanted to talk to you a bit about the new album. What would you say you guys were setting out to do?

John Petrucci: We had a little bit of a plan. It wasn’t very specific. It was more like a guideline for a mission statement for the particular record, which was to try to create songs, arrangement-wise, that were more eclectic within the song. Some of our early music, when we wrote it – we were really young – probably due to immaturity of songwriting abilities, we just would throw these things together. One song would have all these different stylistic elements. We’d have like a metal section, followed by like a little jazzy thing. We didn’t realize it, but that was the charm of our style. And I think as we developed our songwriting abilities, we honed in on those different styles. Not all the time, but some of the time, the music became more focused. The song would strictly stay in one direction. And so on this album, we wanted to use everything that we learned up to that point as far as songwriting, production, the heaviness of the band, the sound of the band, and infuse that with the older style of incorporating different musical styles within one song. That’s probably why there are so many epics on the album. Every time we do a new album, we try to take some sort of step forward, to do something different than we did in the past, to improve upon what we did. If anybody were to listen to our catalog, it’s all different. It’s interesting; it’s not just regurgitating the same thing.

EB: You can usually tell with your albums just by the first song what the tone is going to be, more or less, and I found that this one starts with a bit of darker overtones. Was there anything that influenced your writing toward something a little bit more somber?

JP: The opening track was the first song that we wrote, and we wrote it in New York right around Halloween time. And we called the song ‘Halloween’ – that was the working title – and it just musically had a very Tim Burton, Nightmare Before Christmas kind of vibe to it – a little bit comical and quirky. We didn’t intend for the entire album to be that way, but that’s just how that one song worked out.

EB: When you’re writing progressive music, how do you strike a balance between conveying emotion but then also bringing out the technicality that we see in Dream Theater?

JP: It’s just all about songwriting. It’s about trying to convey whatever message you have inside musically. You want to get that point across in the best way possible. If that message is something that’s really intense, it might require a lot of technical elements in order to make it sound intense and to get people’s blood pressure to rise. The ultimate is when you can say, we have a certain vision, let’s make it happen, and then you actually do make it happen. That’s where you get that balance of emotion and technicality.

EB: I wanted to ask you more personally: you’re regarded as one of the best guitar players in the scene. What do you do, aside from practicing Dream Theater songs, to stay at that level and keep your chops up?

JP: I do a lot of the stuff that I started out doing that I think any guitar player that’s concerned about the craft needs to do: basic practicing of the basic elements. I try to practice a well-rounded regimen of things, that way I can do whatever I want to do. I also have to practice the actual songs just to keep that under my fingers as well.

EB: It’s said that you guys try to keep all of your repertoire ready to go for whatever show you play. How challenging is that? I mean, you have a lot of albums to remember.

JP: It tends to be a little bit overwhelming in the preparation stage. Like, for example, we’re including ‘The Dance Of Eternity’ on this tour, and I hadn’t played that song in a really long time. So I was home before the tour started, and I’m listening to it, and it was like I was listening to somebody else’s music. I couldn’t remember what part followed what and how I played it. Sometimes I’ll even go to YouTube and look at videos. I can’t remember exactly the positioning and where it was.

EB: You mention YouTube. Do you ever see any videos of kids showing that they’re trying to do what you’re doing? How do you feel about that?

JP: I see it all the time. I see kids playing stuff better than me, too, which is scary. There’s always been a great community of guitar players, and I think that YouTube and the internet and things just bring people even closer. Everything is way more readily available, and people are trading stuff immediately right after we’re finished playing – it’s out there. There’s a whole string of videos where somebody voiced over this incredibly deep voice, and they did it with my instructional video and some video moments from G3, and it’s hysterical.