John Petrucci interview

Tyler Larson: You just released a new solo album and we’re gonna dive into it soon, but I have to ask: when you release a new album or finish a huge project, how do you celebrate?

John Petrucci: How do I celebrate? Oh man, probably with some bourbon. It’s probably the best way.

TL: OK, any bourbon of choice?

JP: I have so many bourbons that I really, really enjoy. I love Blanton’s. I love Elijah Craig. There’s just so many different ones out there that are, that are incredible that I’ve been experimenting with and enjoying. I think it’s important to, I always like to make a conscious note that something was accomplished, whether it’s like between my wife and I and saying, you know what, I did this, I feel really good about this, I really – let’s have a drink or a toast – or with my engineer Jimmy T or Andy Sneap, who makes the record, to just say, whether you take a second out on a call or in person or with a text, like, hey man, I feel really great about this, we accomplish it. I think that’s a good way to sort of celebrate and just don’t let it just, the moment just kind of like pass by.

TL: It is hard, especially now where it’s kind of fast pace in anything we do, but speaking to music, like it’s so easy to just say on to the next one and forget what you just spent like your entire life, it feels like, doing.

JP: Right, so right, exactly, yeah. You want to sort of savor it.

TL: Yes, just like, just like a glass of bourbon.

-----

TL: I’m going to play you a little sound clip, and I just want to get your reaction.

[plays Necromicon Prologue]

JP: [laughs] Was that from Necronomicon?

TL: Yes, it was.

JP: I was like, I know this sounds familiar, it kind of sounds like me, but I’m not sure. Oh, that’s awesome.

TL: Yeah, it’s got to be the coolest pinball soundtrack of all time, right?

JP: Yeah. I was asked for that project to make like these really short things, like an intro minute-and-a-half thing and an outro thing. And that was the first time and the last time I ever did anything like that. I think doing more music for gaming would be awesome.

TL: I have a couple kind of softball lobs for you, and I call this segment Burning Questions. So these are rapid-fire questions that if you were to conduct a live master class or a live stream where anybody could ask you any questions about anything they want regarding guitar music, these are the questions they would ask. What gauge for picks do you use?

JP: I have a few different signature versions; I have the Flow pick that’s 2mm. The general size of a Jazz III, like my Trinity is, I don’t know exactly, it’s probably 1.3 in that zone, so somewhere in that zone. 1 is too light for me.

TL: What gauge strings do you use?

JP: I use 10 through 46, Ernie Ball.

TL: What’s your number one guitar?

My number one guitar, currently, is my Ernie Ball/Music Man Majesty Nebula, the Purple Nebula one, that’s the one I’ve been playing the most.

TL: What’s your favorite amp?

JP: These are easy questions – it’s my Mesa/Boogie signature JP 2C. It’s like the best amplifier on the planet – the best one ever made.

TL: Finally what’s your favorite guitar pedal?

JP: I’m fortunate enough to be able to design these with these incredible companies, manufacturers, and families, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that Dunlop JP95 Wah, that’s just an unbelievable wah – that one right there. And it looks so badass in the dark chrome.

-----

TL: This wah pedal, it just makes me play differently. You have a big influence in that sort of style; when I play that kind of music I have you and a couple of more guys as my primary influences, but I think – in the best way – sometimes you become a lesser version of somebody you’re trying to emulate, but I think that’s what I love about this guitar pedal. It gives the epic, really deep sound, and allows me to play like myself, if that makes sense...

It does make sense, it enables you to express yourself to the truest, and your playing sounds great. I mean, what I love about the sound of that pedal is that it has so much attitude to it. There’s a lot of different wah pedals out there, and they’re all doing a similar kind of thing, but this pedal just has tons of attitude and one of the things that we did with this as well. I’m all about the practicality of gear, especially when it comes to performance, and the fact that when you turn it on, it glows blue around the front of your foot, and you know that it’s on is something that was really important to me. So many times when I’m playing a wah I think I’m playing a wah, and I think I’m hearing it, but nothing’s actually on.

TL: Or the worst is when it’s accidentally on, and you’re like, “Why is my tone like mud? What’s happening?”

JP: It’s so dark, yeah. The other thing I should say too that I was proud to develop my Dreamscape pedal with TC Electronic. That’s like a dream-come-true pedal, no pun intended. I use forever and ever the TC SCF pedal, the original stereo chorus black pedal with the cable that was connected to it and everything, and that was a big part of my sound, and this was the first signature pedal that TC ever did. I could be wrong, it might be the only one, I’m not sure. To be able to look at that original SCF and say, “What would you want to change,” and putting forth, again, my practical ideas... “Well, it’s a little bit noisy. It could be a little smaller. I’d like more flexibility here. I’d like it to be true bypass” – things like that, and basically that is that original SCF pedal, but a modernized version of it, so that was a true honor to get to do that with them.

TL: Yeah, this is a killer pedal. So, you just released a new album, Terminal Velocity, and I’m not going to ask why there’s a 15-year gap between your two solo releases... I’ve heard you mention you recorded Terminal Velocity between March and May, and my question is, it seems like you cranked this out in an unbelievably short time, but it sounds like something that somebody could have worked on for years. So John, how much pent-up creativity have you been holding?

JP: Well, like you said, with that gap of time in between, I didn’t have the type of time that I like to dedicate towards doing records. I mean, the last Dream Theater record, Distance Over Time, that took five months. The band went away to a remote location, I produced it, so I was there every day. I’ll spend 10-hour days in the studio. So with Terminal Velocity, I planned on doing it starting in March before the pandemic hit, but then it hit, and we were on lockdown. So obviously, I had more time than I thought. But even with that, I was in the studio five days a week, ten or more hours a day, and that’s the way I like to work. I like to just completely immerse myself in the project, in the headspace, and work really hard. Now, five of the songs are brand new that I wrote in March, in that period. Three of the songs I had written already and had some demos. Two of them I played live on G3, and one was a really old song that I resurrected. So I didn’t have to write from scratch all of the material, but more than half of it is brand new. But I guess the short answer is just working really intense, long days for a consistent period of time, not taking time off, and just really getting into it.

TL: Right now I want to play a little game I call Name Those Notes. So the concept is pretty simple: I’ll play a quick sequence of guitar notes from songs that you have recorded over the years, and you have to tell me from which songs these notes come from, and it’ll spur some conversation about the music too.

[plays brief excerpt of ‘Metropolis’]

JP: That’s from ‘Dance Of Eternity’, right? No, it’s from ‘Metropolis’.

TL: Very good.

JP: ‘Dance Of Eternity’ and Scenes From A Memory is based on ‘Metropolis’, so the instrumental ‘Dance Of Eternity’ has that same sequence of notes, so I’m not wrong! [laughs]

TL: Yeah, you’re right twice almost. So [with] that song in particular, I was wondering what do you say to people who say that guitarists who play a lot of notes aren’t as musical or don’t have emotion in their guitar playing?

JP: I never bought into that statement, ever. To me, as an instrumentalist, you should have the ability to produce anything that your mind sort of thinks of. Think about classical composers writing symphonies for all these different instruments, demanding that the violins do this crazy thing over here, and then, “Oh, this section of the music requires complete discipline and tone and beauty.” And you have to be able to do everything in between. Just because you develop that craft side of the instrument that you play doesn’t mean that you don’t have the ability to be expressive on the instrument. So I don’t buy into that argument at all. I think it’s false.

TL: I agree and I often find those who may be saying things like that or have that notion can’t necessarily execute what it is they’re criticizing, if that makes sense.

JP: It could be some of that, for sure. It’s kind of a lazy statement because you’re not really thinking about it. If you listen to guitar players who are known to be super-expressive, whether you’re thinking of Stevie Ray Vaughan or whoever that may be, I mean, these guys shred their heads off. And some of the most-shredding guys are able to play melodies like no other. I’m a huge fan of Steve Morse – my favorite guitar player of all time – and the guy can play anything, and he has these beyond beautiful melodies in compositions and sequences of chords and notes that are just incredible. Somebody like Tommy Emmanuel – I saw him live in New York City, and the guy has technique for days and days and days like a freakin’ freight train. Meanwhile I’m watching him and I’m like crying literally because there’s so much emotion exuding out of him. So that argument is dead in the water as far as I’m concerned. People’s ability to command their instrument, if anything gives them more, not all the time, but a lot of times gives them more connection to the emotional part.

-----

TL: Alright, let’s move on to another song.

[plays ‘Jaws of Life’ at 4:27]

JP: That’s ‘Jaws of Life’ from Suspended Animation, right?

TL: That’s exactly what it is.

JP: I don’t know if I recognize myself or Dave LaRue doing the old bass thumping there.

TL: That moment is the best part of your entire first solo album, in my opinion, because of just what you mentioned – the groove that’s happening between the rhythm section in that melody, which is actually the lick. You know ‘the lick’?

JP: ‘The lick’? I don’t know ‘the lick’.

TL: It’s the progressive metal version of ‘the lick’, and I don’t think it’s ever been pointed out, but I had to show it.

JP: That’s awesome. I subconsciously channeled ‘the lick’.

TL: It happens. It’s just this thing that’s built into musicians, and it transcends genre. People think it’s just a jazz thing, but no, it goes everywhere.

JP: What I like about that section, and I did this on Terminal Velocity as well with playing with the trio, is when recording in the studio, it’s very easy to kind of get into the idea of during guitar solo sections, there’s going to be a rhythm guitar playing. And for the most part, on Suspended Animation and on Terminal Velocity, there is. But I purposely picked a few moments to just keep a trio, like we’re jamming live. There’s no rhythm guitars, and you could really hear what the drums and bass are doing to support the soloist. And in that case, that’s a great example of that. I think on Terminal Velocity, it might be in The Way Things Fall, there might be a couple moments in a couple of songs where I do the same, where I just lose the rhythm guitars and we’re a trio, and it just sounds like we’re really jamming together, which I love the sound of that.

TL: Let’s move on to another sound, shall we?

[plays brief excerpt from Steve Morse’s Power Lines instructional video]

JP: That’s not me. What is that? I don’t even know what that is. Is that my playing?

TL: It is not you, but I’m 99.9% sure you’re aware of this person and know where this comes from.

JP: Is that a Steve Morse thing? It almost sounds like – based on the record, it almost sounds like – is that from like a guitar clinic or a master class or something?

TL: It’s from Power Lines – an instructional VHS.

JP: There’s a Steve Morse instructional cassette that I had, had all of these exercises: like one note per string, two note, three, four, that I still practice. When I started playing guitar, I was 12 years old. I grew up on Long Island in New York, there’s a lot of rock music playing on the radio. That was probably my first influence was just learning AC/DC and Zeppelin and stuff like that, and Ozzy came out with Blizzard, and learning all that. But as I started to get better, I had like my friend’s older brother or like a friend of their older brother who were just old enough to go to the bars and see the shows, and they’d see the Dregs play in New York, and they’d see Al Di Meola play, and those guys would turn me on – this one guy in particular turned me on to Steve Morse. And when I heard him play, it just changed my whole perspective on guitar playing. Like, I knew that I wanted to be able to play like that and have this powerful right hand technique, and it changed everything, changed my whole course. And I tried to learn all that music and stuff, so Steve was a huge, huge influence on me musically.

TL: That’s great. Last sound.

[plays three notes of ‘Temple of Circadia’]

JP: Well, that’s ‘Temple of Circadia’.

TL: Only took three notes – technically two notes.

JP: I did the game you’re doing at my last Guitar Universe camp.

TL: Oh really? Yeah, and this isn’t a completely original idea then.

JP: Well, no, it’s a great idea. I love it, but I did it playing in real time in front of the audience, and I would do it by a note or two notes or whatever, and people would guess. But I did one song with no notes, and people had to guess what I was getting ready to play. It had more to do with my stance and all right. What I said to everybody: “This one’s gonna be really difficult. You have to name this song in no notes.” I don’t remember if anybody got it, but it was pretty fun.

TL: That’s awesome. Well, let’s segue to talk about Terminal Velocity since you just got that one right. That was the first couple of notes of...

JP: Temple of Circadia. So, OK, the phrase, your circadian rhythm, your sleep cycle and all that. I just love the name Circadia. When I think about it, it just sounds like a land in Game of Thrones or something – Circadia. So I wasn’t even sure if it was a word. I’m not sure it is a word.

TL: Well, that’s the beauty of instrumental music. There’s no holds barred for naming these songs. It’s whatever you want.

JP: Exactly. And the cool thing, if it is a word and has anything to do with your circadian rhythm, having to do with your sleep cycle and stuff, that obviously ties into dreams and Dream Theater and surreal worlds. So that was my thinking with that one.

-----

TL: Yeah, so Terminal Velocity is kind of an uplifting album overall. I mean, there’s even a song called ‘Happy Song’, and I want to ask you – it’s so difficult to write memorable melodies, and I think as guitar players, especially, we often struggle with motifs, and especially in the instrumental space, specifically. But you manage to do the opposite with this song, which is to take a lot of notes but still make it memorable, like a memorable phrase that you come back to. So, do you outline like four notes first that you really like and then fill in the gaps, or is it a lick that you come up with all at once? What’s your strategy for writing a fast hook?

JP: Sometimes it starts with a technique that I’m working on, and that – in the case of ‘Happy Song’, it was a technique. It was a legato technique that I was just fooling around with, and I don’t remember how I was originally doing it – maybe in a scale or something – and then I just started like skipping a string, and then, “wait, what if I made that major?” And then it just turned into like this cool motif. And I’ve said this many times, but whenever that happens, and I’m in that moment, and my brain goes, “Hey, that’s kinda cool sounding,” I record it immediately just so I have it, I have some kind of reference, and I don’t forget it. And so, like I said, in the case of that, it stemmed from a technique I was practicing that I morphed into something that signaled to myself like, “Hey, this is cool sounding, I should do something with this.” So that’s how that particular one happened. So it didn’t come from a melodic space. Sometimes ideas come from, “I want to use this tonality,” like Terminal Velocity is very melodic, major... So it’s like I wanted to use that tonality, that modality, but this one came from like a technique that morphed into a lick that I thought was cool.

TL: Terminal Velocity sort of brought me back to kind of like a pop-punk almost – it’s a sound I haven’t necessarily heard from you before. Because the happiness is obviously there, but it’s like got this kind of more straight-ahead feel for some of the song.

JP: Yeah, I mean, again, when I collect ideas, they only exist as sort of these seeds. It could only last for 10 seconds, 15 seconds, whatever it is. When I sat down in March to write the album Terminal Velocity, I had done some work on the computer ahead of time, sort of organizing all those ideas, making note of which ones I thought were the best ones, maybe which ones sort of like went together in key or tonality and might make a song somehow. But when I sat down in March, the first thing I wrote was the song ‘Terminal Velocity’, and all that I had was that little opening motif. So I literally started with that, recorded that, programmed some drums, played bass, and I had the first little chunk, and then just started writing the music, and it developed organically into the song. So I don’t really know where the other parts of the mood of that song came from inspirationally, but it started just from that little first seed. And the interesting thing about writing a record this way, by myself, the only other person in the room is my engineer Jimmy T. There’s no other band members or musicians I’m bouncing ideas off of, “What do you have? Where should this go?” It’s just sort of my own creative brain saying, “Alright, it might be interesting to go here, and let’s see what happens.” So it’s like you’re building a house from the ground up, but you don’t really have a blueprint for the house. All you have is the foundation. So it’s an interesting way.

TL: It could be like maybe mildly refreshing too because you have like bands and you work in that environment, so when you do, especially something that’s a little bit more personal, like a solo album, it could be cool to have that bit of isolation.

JP: Exactly, and it’s almost like more of a stream of consciousness type of writing where you’re letting the next part develop from where the last part left off. It’s a fun way of writing. It’s a little less structured, and I think the songs kind of come out interesting, and they reflect a deeper part of your imagination because you’re just doing it on the spot, and you’re not really sure where you’re going.

TL: Another song that was a pretty new sound from you, at least to me, was ‘Out Of The Blue’, which is this lovely blues ballad. As a guitar player, it must have been pretty satisfying to record that one. It sounded like you really channeled your inner Gary Moore.

JP: Absolutely, yeah. I love playing that style. I mean, again, with these different seeds of ideas that I had, that was one of them. That opening melody and chord progression just stood out to me as, “I really want to do something with this.” I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it, but I want to do something with it. And because the basic structure is a blues, with just some substituted chords in there on the turnarounds, it turned into a blues song. It turned into that sort of shuffle that you feel on the drums. And that super bluesy, expressive Gary Moore kind of way of playing, or Carlos Santana, whatever, I love doing that. It’s really satisfying. And a lot of the soloing and melodic playing on that is improvised is from when I was laying out initially, “OK, here’s the chord progression. Let me quickly do a melody over the top. Let me quickly just improvise a solo.” A lot of that we kept, so I think for a blues-type of thing, it’s sort of important to maintain the spirit of improvisation on a song like that.

TL: Yeah, that totally makes sense for that genre. So, what’s the highlight on the album for you? Or it could be like a memory centered around it if you can’t pick just one thing.

JP: Well, I’ll tell you what was sort of fun for me that I never did before, even though I’m a huge fan. I talked about when I was younger getting turned on to Steve Morse and Al Di Meola. The live record Friday Night in San Francisco with Al Di Meola, Paco de Lucía, and John McLaughlin – was a huge, huge influence on me, again, for that right-hand playing, just beyond being able to have a command of the instrument technically. And of course, that’s all on acoustic. We talked about Tommy – getting into gypsy jazz, getting turned on to Joscho Stephan, the German gypsy jazz guitar player who’s also doing my camp next year, and playing that kind of style a lot, like at home or whatever, but never putting it on an album. The moment in ‘Gemini’ comes to mind, where I do a solo in that style in the middle of that song. It kind of goes to a Latin feel, and all of a sudden there’s an acoustic, sort of Al Di Meola-ish, gypsy jazz style.

TL: It’s funny you brought up that Al Di Meola live cut. Every time I hear that style – and you flawlessly executed on that, which is a testament to your musicianship – it’s hard. You can’t fake that.

JP: Right, right. There’s definitely – especially on acoustic guitar – there’s definitely an element of technique you have to develop. But it’s a side – and that guitar that I played it on is a Selmer-Maccaferri D-hole gypsy-style guitar, which is – they use a different kind of string on it, the scale is a bit different, it’s meant to be sort of a loud guitar, and it requires like some comfort playing on that kind of guitar. But if you listen to that Django style, man, it’s just wild, because it’s basically shred acoustic through jazz changes. It took me a long time to get turned on to [it].

TL: It’s intimidating, almost.

JP: Yeah, it’s crazy, but it’s like right up my alley. I mean, I saw a show at Carnegie Hall with Al Di Meola doing this DjangoFest, and he’s got every last person [that] can just shred acoustic. So like, where have I been? Like, how did I miss this? So it was fun to put something like that on the record.

TL: Where did ‘Gemini’ come from?

JP: So ‘Gemini’ is the oldest song on the album. I wrote it way back in the early–mid 90s. I used to do a lot of guitar clinics, the NAMM show and things like that, and I had a bunch of songs that I programmed on this little sequencer that I would play as demo songs at the clinics. That was one of them. I played it for [my father-in-law] in our apartment we were living at the time, and he was like, “That should be called ‘Gemini’.” It just like came to his head, and I was like, “Alright, I’ll call it ‘Gemini’.” And so he named it. So that’s a great tribute to him. And the version on the record, where it does go from acoustic to electric solo, I guess sort of illustrates that Gemini, the two sides of that.

I actually had trouble trying to reproduce that song for Terminal Velocity because I had no version of it to reference. We looked for the best like YouTube bootleg version of somebody at a guitar clinic filming me play that, and that’s the audio that I went by and kind of extrapolated what I meant to play and built the song off of that. So that was a challenge, but we got it done.

The other interesting thing about that – we talked about ‘Happy Song’ – there were two songs that I played live on G3 a few times and at my Guitar Universe camps: ‘Happy Song’ and ‘Glassy-Eyed Zombies’. But there was also a third song that I wrote in that same period that I meant to play on G3. It was called ‘The Way Things Fall’. That wasn’t the title but I demoed it, fully wrote it, demoed it, and totally forgot about it. I never played it on G3. It just sat on my hard drive. And when I was doing the research to start Terminal Velocity, collecting song ideas and everything, I found it, and I’m like, “Hmmmm... what is this?” And there was a full song. I’m like, “Oh, I’ve totally forgot about this. This song is cool.”

TL: You bring up G3 – do you have a funny G3 story, like something backstage or something onstage?

JP: I have a great G3 story, there’s so many funny ones. We’re playing in Philadelphia – and in G3 there’s three different guitar players, and at the end we all jam – so Joe was doing his set, and I was waiting backstage with my wife Rena. We’re just chilling out, Joe’s on stage, I know I’m gonna play in about half-hour or whatever it is, and all of a sudden we hear a sound in the room, and it sounded like there was an animal in the wall or something, like, “What the hell is that?” We’re in the room – and it had a drop ceiling – and then right above us, all of the sudden we see a foot come through the ceiling, and then a hand, and then a whole person – like it was hatched from the ceiling, and fell on us. My guitars were there, Rena and I were there; the ceiling stuff cut my arm. I was totally surprised, but also really pissed and I took the guy – I was like, “What the hell?!”, I walked him down – it was an old theater, so flights and flights of steps, got security. It was an inebriated patron who somehow found his way through a door through the rafters in the ceiling, was totally lost..

TL: ...and stepped through the dry-wall ceiling.

JP: And then I got on stage, and I had like bandages on my arms for the jam. And I guess word got around the stage and everything, and Joe goes up to me and says, “What happened?! I heard you brought down the house!” [laughs] Maybe people heard that before, but that’s a pretty epic G3 funny story.

TL: So that concert I mentioned where I saw you was at Berklee College of Music, and it was where I went to school and it’s where you went to school. And you’re back playing music with your longtime pal Mike Portnoy, who you met in Berklee. That must have been hugely satisfying to reunite and pick up where you left off musically.

JP: Yeah, absolutely. John Myung and I, we grew up together and we went to Berklee together, we were roommates and we met Mike there, we were all 18 years old. It turned out that Mike was actually from Long Island as well, so it wasn’t too far of a stretch – he lived in a town about an hour away from us. We just liked all the same music and bands, and just growing up on Long Island with the same kind of upbringing. So that was the immediate connection, because Berklee is a very international school, even more so now than it was then – people come from all over the world and all over the country, so we could’ve met anybody. It could’ve been from Australia, anywhere, but we happened to meet another Long Islander who we related to and then formed this band. Fast forward, we’re in a band, 25 years together, Mike leaves, and now 10 years since he left, I asked him to do this record, and I’m so happy that I did and that he said yes. Like you said, this record has a very uplifting vibe; I think the story of Mike reuniting with me musically on this helped contribute to that; that in itself is very positive, especially during this crazy pandemic and everything that’s going on. You know, I wrote the record, recorded the guitars, and he recorded the drums to those guitars in my studio. But just his approach – and his lively off-the-cuff playing style helps to make those songs like ‘Happy Song’, ‘Terminal’, ‘Temple’, have all this energy and spirit. So it was just overall a very positive vibe. I love the way the fans responded to that; no drama and BS, just happy to see us together and a great, positive response to the record. So that was really encouraging as well.

TL: Yeah, it really shone through. When you were in Boston, do you have any memories from being 18 in Boston? Is there any nostalgic feeling that you get from Boston?

JP: Oh, definitely. I mean, my son graduated Berklee as well. I loved being there on Berklee Beach and seeing all the kids just like me with gig bags. I felt like I really, really belonged. We rehearsed almost every day, and we were always in this one specific rehearsal room – that was E19 – and that’s where we practiced. So yeah, lots of great memories from that, even though it was only two semesters. It was only one year that we went there.

TL: Oh, right on. Your guitar tone has evolved over the years. It seems like you’ve really fine-tuned your guitar tone over the years and really been meticulously changing intricate parts of it. Can you like give us the dumbed-down version of what under the hood you’ve been working on?

JP: Well, the biggest thing is, a long time ago, I got turned onto Mesa/Boogie amps, and you don’t know why you identify with a certain type of tone or sound or amplifier, but you just do. You connect, you plug in, you’re like, “Man, this thing sounds awesome. I feel like I can do anything.” So, in those early days, I was playing Boogies, and that was part of helping me develop the sound that I heard in my head. I got turned onto the Mark II C+, which is like one of their iconic holy grail amps of all time. It’s the Master Of Puppets amp and everything else, and I really identified with the sound of that amp. Like, when I plugged in my guitar, I felt like that thing could do anything, that kind of milky lead thing, but also super heavy crunch and stuff like that. I played Boogies for years and years and years and years.

Fast forward, I was able to develop the first signature Mesa/Boogie amp based on that iconic C+. So, that’s part of it. So, part of getting this tone that I heard in my head was the initial connection with Boogie, but also working with Boogie, those same people, Randall Smith, the same guy who designed the first Mark I that Carlos Santana played, to design the JP-2C and really, really get it dialed to where it’s the ultimate amp that does everything my imagination is cooking up.

The other part of that is obviously the guitar and the pickups. Now, DiMarzio, I’ve been with forever, from the beginning, and had such a great relationship with Larry DiMarzio and Steve Blucher, who designs the pickups. And over the course of these years, we’ve honed in on what I’m looking for – having maybe this has too much high end, maybe it needs to be rounder, maybe the low end needs to be a little less clogged so these notes could sing more. So, the development of the pickups and having signature pickups through the years has helped too.

Then finally, in the biggest piece of the guitars now with Ernie Ball/Music Man. I first met Sterling Ball 20 years ago, and we’re celebrating 20 years of developing these incredible signature instruments. And again, that journey of developing, “What sound am I hearing, what does mahogany sound like, what does maple and alder and basswood sound like, what about the electronics, the layout, etc.” So, you take those pieces of the puzzle over the course of many, many years, since Suspended 15 years, and here I am with what are the ultimate pieces of the puzzle that perfectly do what I’ve been thinking of this whole time.

I call that process – I named my business as the Tone Mission. It’s like people’s tone mission; it’s how the path that you take, the journey that you take, to get the sound that’s in your head finally realized. And I’ve been fortunate enough to do that working with these incredible companies to develop the signature gear. But that’s it in a nutshell. I don’t know if that’s a dumbed-down version, but that’s the best way for me to describe it. And so now, the fun thing is, I just get to reap the benefits because recording Terminal it’s just a joy. I mean, I plug in the Majesty into the head, dial it the way I’m used to dialing it, and it just sounds awesome. OK, record that. You’re not sitting there trying to get a tone for hours and frustrated and trying different amps and, “Oh, I don’t know about this guitar and what about this?” There’s none of that. It’s like, gone. It’s just like, this guitar, plug it into that head and mic it, go.

TL: I heard rumblings of an eight-string guitar. Is that real, or is that just like a fantasy in the Twitterverse?

JP: They’re real rumblings; we have been talking about this for a while, developing an eight-string version of the Majesty. We did a whole bunch of research, went through some drawings and stuff, and so now it’s a reality that we’re talking about building, and I’m hoping to get a prototype real soon. What I would really love to do – it didn’t work out on the last Dream Theater record scheduling-wise, but hopefully with the next one, which we’re gonna start working on really soon, is to have one in time for that so that I can experiment with it and write with it. But yeah, those rumblings are true, I have nothing to show you yet, but in due time that will be a reality, so I’m excited about that. I have no experience playing an eight-string. I related to back when we wrote Awake and I got my first seven-string sent to the studio – it was a Steve Vai version [with] green pickups, the same one that’s in the ‘Lie’ video – and just started writing. I never played a seven-string before, and we wrote ‘The Mirror’ and all of that, and I was like, “This is awesome.”

TL: Nice. What is your favorite airplane album?

JP: I wouldn’t say I have a favorite, but what I do, I find that time a really good time to listen to what I happen to be working on. Because I don’t do that too often, especially when producing a record and getting to the point where you’re listening to mixes and mastering, it gets very technical, and you’re listening for things. You’re listening for level and EQ, and I don’t really get a chance to just listen to it as an objective listener. So on the plane, I like to just put on the headphones and put on the record and actually listen to it. Yeah, I’ve done that a bunch of times, and just take it in as an objective listener. So that’s something I enjoy doing because it’s just like uninterrupted time where you have nothing else going on, no distractions.

TL: OK. Build a band: what four others, living or dead, would you want to play with? So it’s a five-person band, you’re on guitar. Who are the other four members?

JP: Oh my God. Well, I’d have to have Geddy Lee on bass. That would be a dream come true. It’d be great playing with Dennis Chambers. I’ve always been a fan of his drumming. Peter Gabriel would have to be the vocalist. He’s like my favorite. We’ll have André Segovia on classical guitar and see what happens.

TL: That’s an amazing band. I have one final question for you: what do you believe about the guitar or guitar playing that others might not believe?

JP: Well, I think that my strongest belief – and I think a lot of players would actually relate to this – that’s the only problem with my answer, but my strongest belief, and I’m very biased, is I think that electric guitar, specifically, is the most expressive musical instrument other than a voice. That’s my true feeling. I really think the electric guitar being amplified through something with distortion, being able to manipulate the strings and everything that we do with pedals and whatnot – that it’s the most moving and expressive instrument more than anything else. But again, I’m biased. People probably argue at that point, that play other instruments, and rightly so. I have respect for all that.

And the other thing I would say as well, is that tone really comes from individual players’ hands and their approach to the instrument. And this could be proven by you and somebody else playing through the exact same rig and sounding completely different, even if you’re playing the same thing. So, as much as we focus on tone and gear development and stuff – which is important – it’s also important to note that who you are actually, physically, biologically has a lot to do with how you sound on guitar. And that circles back to why it’s such an expressive instrument, because you’re just completely physically connected to it directly, and it comes out. So it’s pretty crazy.