full band Twitter Q&A

@adameastment: How do you guys keep yourselves "grounded"?

James LaBrie: I can't really speak on behalf of the other guys. I do know that a lot of it comes from the fact that once you've been doing something as long as we have, the main things that you pull from for me are family, to keep a balance between your profession and your personal life. And I think we all are coming from a similar angle as far as knowing this is extremely important to us; this has created our lives, but at the same time I think we also realize too, all the other things in life that are extremely important to us. That's the major thing that keeps myself grounded for one and I think the other guys too.

@EmilMoodysson: Is there any chance John Myung will be writing lyrics on this album? Are there any plans of an instrumental song?

John Myung: Yes. There's a bunch of songs here and I’ll most likely take one and I'm looking forward to that. @EmilMoodysson: Are there any plans for an instrumental song?

JM: Yes, we actually finished the instrumental not too long ago. It's really cool and I can’t wait for you to hear it.

@PhilyHagz: Do you write the music first and then write lyrics to suit it, or do you write the lyrics before the music?

John Petrucci: I would say that 99.9% of the time, we write the music first. All Dream Theater songs exist as an instrumental first, although having said that we know which sections of the music are meant for vocals – which is a verse, which is a chorus, which is a bridge – but it does exist as an instrumental first, and then we model the melodies after that. Once we have a melody sketch, then we write the lyrics. But every so often there might be a lyrical idea that, speaking for myself, I'll jot down, and I have a bunch of phrases or sections that I'll use at some point. But generally music first.

@Ivinhu_VII: How do you start a new song composition? Got a method or do you just jam 'til you find some cool riffs?

Jordan Rudess: Well, there's many ways to make it happen and we definitely use a lot of different methods. Generally speaking it usually starts with some kind of a seed and one of the John's will bring something in, one of the boys has an idea, and we get some inspiration from that. We have to have something to work off of. Once that seed has been presented to the room, then we can jam or we can take some time. Generally what I'll do is I’ll take out some music paper and I like to look at things and kind of figure out my own little world of possibilities, and everybody has their way to do that. So while the whole thing is very loose and we can do it in many different ways, that's one of the ways that we tend to make it happen.

@brianpitches4u – How does Mike prepare to write/record his epic drum parts?

Mike Mangini: What I do is take a look at my drum set while listening to what the other players are playing and I just basically match frequency ranges and the feel, meaning if the Johns are playing something in unison, I'll probably follow that with the kick drums and follow Jordan with the higher register noises. But basically, I'm listening and then watching my drums, and then I just go and the rest is... I can't explain.

@DTForumsOrg: Is James going to record his vocals in the same studio as the other guys, or is he going to do as he did for ADTOE?

James LaBrie: Interestingly enough, we just spoke of this yesterday, and seeing as Rich Chycki, who is our engineer and who recorded my vocals last album is down here engineering and is needed for various parts of the process of recording, it only makes sense that I'm going to record here at the studio. In between myself tracking, the other guys can also continue with their tracking when I'm not around or when I'm taking a break from recording vocals. So this time we're all together in the same studio recording.

@bassmckagan: Will JM use the Chapman Stick on this new album or on any other future album?

JM: As of right now, it hasn't happened. I’m sort of on the fence about using it, so I'm just kind of undecided at this point, so we’ll see what happens with that.

@rafaprogmetal: JP will you use solely Mesa Royal Atlantic or Mark V as well? If so how are you setting em up?

JP: On this album I did use the Royal Atlantic for one song. It has a bit of a different sound than my usual Mark amps, but the majority of the album is the Mark V and also some of my Mark IIC+’s that I have, as well as a TriAxis, so it's all Boogie. And how am I setting them up? With the exception of the Royal which is a kind of a different beast, the Mark amps, I can pretty much set them up all the same as far as settings. To get specific, the gain is usually around between six and a half to eight, the trebble is around seven to seven and a half, the bass is about one to two, mid is 4.5... It's crazy that I have this memorized, but I do. Presence is about 4.5, and the EQ does sort of a little bit of a smiley face.

@Chriphery: As a band, what's your most memorable moment? Getting signed, first album release etc.

JR: There definitely [are] specific memorable moments, some maybe more personal than band moments. I definitely remember my first show in New York City with the band when everybody was chanting my name and I was blown away because I'd never like experienced anything quite like that. But then as a band, probably when we do things like we played Madison Square Garden which was very close to our hearts because it's obviously a big place and it's in New York and it was a dream of ours. And recently, a very memorable moment for me and probably the band too is the Luna Park in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when we did our concert DVD filming. The energy was so strong and at one point towards the end, the fans were kind of rushing the stage and I was like, “Wow! This is intense!” So those are some memories.

@RickProg: Will the Live At Luna Park album feature all songs from both nights, including the ones you played twice?

MM: Yes, every song that we played will be on that album, for one version of each.

@greenockkiss: ADTOE was written before Mike joined. Has anything changed with the writing and dynamics for the upcoming album?

JL: Absolutely, many things have changed. The dynamics for this writing process is phenomenal. I think Mike, coming from where he is as a musician and how musical he is, he can't help but bring in a new element into the band throughout the writing process. I think his playing on here is much more cohesive just due to the fact that he is here from the very beginning and throughout the process. So it is going to prove itself to have taken Mike as a player and us as a band to another level, and I think the fans are in for a great treat. It's going to be beautiful.

@RootOfAllEvil94: Any news on release date for the new album?

JM: I believe the fall if all goes according to plan. There’s talk of it coming out towards the end of the summer, so that would be probably the earliest that would happen.

@DTargentinafans: What is the first impression of the band with Richard Chycki in the sound engineering?

JP: First of all, besides being hysterically funny and a master impressionist, which is keeping the mood really, really great here, Rich is a very gifted and talented engineer, he's amazing. There's a couple things that we're doing for the first time that we had talked about from the beginning and followed through on. One of them is that we are set up in the studio to record and write with the sounds that will be on the album. So anything that we do as we're writing, if we capture a performance, it is recorded and there's no need to record scratch tracks or demo tracks; it is the real deal. The second thing is that we can get a very clear picture of the sound of the album right now. In other words, the sounds aren't sort of stripped down and then they have to be mixed; it actually sounds like the album right now. We have a great idea of the shape and sound of the album already, and the impression I think people are going to walk away with is the sounds are amazing, they're alive, they're vivid, they roar, there's a lot of power, they're pummeling. Drums sound amazing, guitars sound incredible, bass sounds incredible, keyboards sound incredible, vocals we haven't done yet, but the last album, Dramatic Turn of Events, Rich recorded James and that sounded amazing. So we're in a really, really good place with Rich engineering.

@Vikernest777: Is Jordan including some new wacky instrument on this album?

JR: There's a variety of choices of wackiness for me to bring into the album, and when I start to do all my final keyboard tracks, I'll probably load all my toys into the control room and do some of that. One instrument that I have that I'm really excited about bringing into the mix and finding a spot for it is this instrument called the Seaboard. It's made by a company I'm doing some work with called Roli, and it's a wacky keyboard in that it kind of brings the black-and-white keyboard idea that we've known and loved for hundreds of years into the next generation by allowing a continuous kind of touch. So you can press a key, and then you can press into it and get this organic type of expression. You can also do things like vibrato on the keyboard. So it's really, really exciting. Who knows what I'll do, but I'll definitely do some of that, and I'm looking forward to trying the Seaboard on the album.