John Petrucci interview (excerpts)

Focusing on the song’s main riff, which is in Standard tuning and was previously described by John as “Metallica-esque,” Petrucci described the piece as “way more straight-ahead,” adding (transcribed by UG):

That’s a very Metallica/Megadeth kind of thing, maybe even, like, Zeppelin-ish. So it’s, like, E-blues with little passing notes.

Focusing on the key performance aspects to capturing the riff’s sound and vibe, the guitarist added:

The idea of when to mute or not to mute – whenever you’re doing the chugging of the low E, that’s when you want to have that kind of power and really short-stop on a dime. You’re gonna get that by dialing in the amp; Boogie sounds like no other amp, but dialing that in where you have enough gain, where it’s not too much gain, where the mids are kind of carved out and you can get this really kind of chunky sound. Again, it’s the palm-muting technique, and in between those, you want to ring.

Petrucci added:

This might be a simple riff, but you might be learning – you might say, ‘Well, for some reason, it’s not exactly sounding like it.’ That would be the reason why.

Focusing on the fast-picking part that follows the main riff, the guitarist explained:

The key to making that sound heavy is when you’re playing the fast tremolo picking, you want to mute the strings just enough to where you’re getting the scraping of the pick, and then the second part, you really bring your palm a lot further away from the bridge, almost to where it sounds like the chord goes sharp, so this E here almost starts to sound like an F. You really sort of press down hard and make it so that it kind of does this slightly sharp sound and that you get this, as my friend once described, ‘the sound of the metal pole being hit against a brick wall.’

He also said:

It’s all about the right hand and what you want to make speak; it’s also what you want to have ‘not’ speak. This is all on the lower three strings, so these higher three strings, you got to make sure those aren’t ringing, so that’s your right-hand control. What I’ll do is I’ll take my pinky and I’ll kind of just like wrap it around those strings a bit so they’re not gonna ring.