Originally published in Raleigh Music Academy · November 2017
John Petrucci interview (excerpt)
InterviewJohn Petrucci4 min read
Speaking about finding inspiration on the road and trying to write music while on tour, Petrucci said:
There’s a couple of different things. As far as playing the show and performing, whether the show is the same or changing slightly, I never lose the excitement of that experience — I’m always so looking forward to that moment; it’s the best part of the day. And the challenge of being able to try to play better than you did the night before and looking out and seeing new people — they’re there for the first time and it’s a new experience for them, so you wanna make it special. So that feeling of performing never gets old — it’s always inspiring.
But as far as being creative while travelling, while being on the road, a couple of different things happen,” he continued. “Oftentimes at soundchecks, we will just start jamming on an idea — maybe somebody had something that they wanted to share — ‘Hey, guys, check this out’ — or something happens organically and we just start to play, and we always have it recorded; we’re always recoding and we archive that stuff. And then we’ll go back when we go in to write a record, we’ll look at that library of ideas and say, ‘Remember, we were jamming on this in Seoul, Korea. What was that idea?’ and we’ll look back [and say], ‘That’s really cool.’ So we’ll have these ideas that we collect. That’s as a group, we do that. As far as writing individually, it depends on when it hits you. A lot of times I’ll be backstage warming up and I’ll start to play something, and [I’ll think], ‘Hey, that’s a pretty cool idea,’ and immediately, I have my iPhone there and I just put it down right away. So I have my own collection of ideas.
Petrucci added:
I’ve done this out of necessity where I had to get some sort of project done and I’m in my hotel room on days off with headphones and a computer and trying to get something demoed, but it’s less of that and more of just capturing these little snippets, little moments of inspiration. Like, ‘That was a really cool riff. That’ll be awesome.’ You don’t wanna forget it. And a lot of that stuff ends up being the inspiration for a song or a part, and so that’s how a lot of the creativity happens. So it’s less recording actual usable tracks and more of just getting ideas down. I find the travel and the daily schedules a little bit too hectic. I know there are guys that are really comfortable doing that and have their laptop and an interface and they can do a whole solo album [on the road]. I wish I was one of those guys. [Laughs] But, yeah, it’s more just like laying down little seeds.
Guitar master John Petrucci was asked by RMA on how Dream Theater composes its melodies, to which he replied (transcribed by UG):
What we try to do is as we’re writing the music - we know a section is a vocal section. We differentiate like, ‘This is instrumental, this is vocal,’ we kinda know as we’re writing. A lot of those melodies kinda come out as we’re writing them. They’re either somewhere in the chord voicing, maybe Jordan will put that on top and that’ll be a sample melody, or as we’re playing I’ll start to play a melody over it and something will pop in. Or I’m hearing a vocal melody and I’ll lay that down somewhere. I would say that it’s sort of happening simultaneously, it’s not like this afterthought like, ‘Let me come up with a melody.’
Asked if he has a melody in his head while composing a tune, John replied:
Sometimes. A song like ‘Damage Control,’ there’s what you would call a chorus in D, I had that sort of melody idea. That does sometimes happen for sure. It kinda hits you. Like a lot of ‘The Astonishing’ writing. For me, as I was literally writing the story and thinking about scenes - melodies would pop in my head and I would sing those. And I’d only have a melody. But a lot of those melodies became some of the themes. So I guess it really depends. Depends on where your head is at at a particular moment, and whether you’re writing together or whether you’re by yourself or something hits you away from an instrument. The melodic part is always there. Even in playing a solo, even if the solo’s going by quickly, if you break it down and slow it down there is a melody that’s going by at every point. If he is playing a chord progression he’ll put the top voice and he’ll start playing a melody within it. Even when we demo songs and you’ll hear that. Sometimes that turns into the vocal melody or guides the vocal melody, sometimes it’s just a counter of line that’s there that creates some orchestration. But one of the fun things that I love to do when we’re writing and doing that is I’ll abandon the whole rhythm thing and I’ll just play over it. It sounds self-indulgent and selfish but I’ll start bringing out the melodies that way. And a lot of the times those melodies stick. A lot of times in our music there’ll be some guitar melody that’s carrying a section, it’ll become that or it’ll be the basis of a vocal melody. To be fair, there is a point when once all that’s done and now it’s lyric writing time where you do hone in more specifically on an exact melody for the section. So there is that sort of writing of melodies specifically for the vocal parts. But a lot of it, a lot of the seeds, a lot of the guides, blueprints, and sometimes the actual melodies, happen at the moment [when the band is working together].