Liquid Tension Experiment

Silencing years’ worth of requests, John Petrucci & Co. unleash the first LTE album in more than two decades

By Amit Sharma

If there were an award for the most active guitar player over the past year or so, it might just belong to Dream Theater virtuoso John Petrucci. His second solo album (Terminal Velocity) arrived in 2020, some 15 years after his debut, and now he’s ready to unveil the third Liquid Tension Experiment album (Liquid Tension Experiment 3), which arrives 22 years after its predecessor and features Tony Levin, Mike Portnoy, Jordan Rudess and, of course, Petrucci. Clearly, good things come to those who wait.

Amit Sharma: You’ve definitely been keeping busy during the lockdown.

John Petrucci: Getting my solo album and the new LTE done silences 10 years’ worth of requests asking me to do them. I finally did those two things! [laughs] But one aspect that hasn’t changed is the gear. I’m working on the new Dream Theater album right now, and it’s the exact same setup. It’s my Purple Nebula Majesty by Music Man, plus my Majesty seven-string, through my JP-2C Boogie. I plug in and it just sounds the way I want it to sound. There’s no searching, it’s right there. All of us guitar players are looking to find that feel and that sound, from every tiny little detail like the fret height on your guitar to the gain setting on your amp. It all means something. So when you are fortunate to have developed gear through Ernie Ball Music Man, Mesa, Dunlop and DiMarzio, why would you use anything else?

AS: ‘Key to the Imagination’ has some really interesting combinations of Phrygian dominant and diminished runs.

JP: There are so many different things you can do with a looping Phrygian dominant backing track – going from harmonic minor to not just diminished arpeggios, but also whole-half scales, chromatic stuff. There’s a lot of freedom to weave in and out of things, even pentatonic and blues. It really opens up so many different ideas. You’re not just confined to one specific scale. I like to do that a lot – use notes that are more outside to get a more Hungarian or Egyptian sound and play with the chromatics around each side of the notes that are in it.

AS: ‘Liquid Evolution,’ on the other hand, has some really interesting swells and violining, including some more straightforward ideas in B minor.

JP: We did four big jams to start off these sessions; this is one of the parts that had a real vibe. So I went back in and improvised over that, which is what you’re hearing. My first instinct was to creep in with those volume swells and clean guitars before building into a more melodic solo. So that’s one of the moments on the record that is truly improvised. In that type of circumstance, I’m really thinking [of] melody. That’s the hat I put on. Choosing the right swells and key notes, like those heart-tugging ninths and 11ths within the framework of both pentatonic and modal patterns.

AS: The opening track, ‘Hypersonic,’ sets the tone for the record, moving from blistering speeds to half-time grooves.

JP: It was kind of an assignment – we started a tradition with the first LTE albums where the listener presses Play and the horse is out of the gate. Here we go! So we wanted to select something with a fast tempo that we’d all play in unison to get that locomotive effect. That was the goal. There’s this palm-muted open-string bouncy riff, and then we took it from there. The key and the secret to that being impactful is that everybody had to play it together. I’ve learned that’s how to get the most mileage out of something, giving it that overwhelming impact. It’s the same in classical music; you can create a lot of drama really quickly. And then the slower sections later on ended up being a lot of fun too. This is instrumental music, and just like my solo album, the listening experience had to be interesting. So it’s important to break things up. If this opening song was just shred the whole way through, it would lose impact. You need moments where the groove becomes the focus, or the chord progression is the focus. That’s what keeps the song moving and pushing along. I love that slower metallic sound... it feels heavy, dark and grooving!

AS: How does a player at your level continue to grow and evolve?

JP: One of the things I feel I’ve become adept at and conscious of is the shape of notes. Some listeners will notice, maybe not all of them, that there’s a lot of melodic guitar playing in my instrumental work because there’s no vocals. I’m really conscious of the way I pick or attack a certain note or whether it sustains in a certain way or how I slide into it. There might be a certain tone coming from where my pick hits the string. Or something particular about the vibrato I chose to use. All of those decisions are made very deliberately. It’s like someone talking or singing; there’s not this monotone approach... instead it’s more layered. I’ve become more focussed on that and worked at getting better on the whole expressive side. I guess it comes down to the nature of instrumental music and the fact that it’s the guitar that has to carry those sections through my choice of melodies. It’s really funny to me how in all these projects, even though I’m the same person, they all sound different to me. My solo album sounds like my solo album, LTE sounds like LTE, and when you hear the new Dream Theater, it will definitely sound like that band. It’s fun to weave in and out of different things. It happens very organically and naturally... it’s a trip!