Mike Mangini comments

I wish there was a lot more kindness out there for all musicians but mostly, more knowledge. This is long information based post, but might be necessary to diffuse assumptions.

A click track for me was a necessary-by-default, forcing on me in order for the video and lights and all kinds of other samples and production to be perfectly timed. I don't need it in any case, ever, just to play a song. Although I believe from experience being the guy on stage, that it's 100 to 10000 times more difficult to play Dream Theater music with a click then without a click, but it doesn’t make a song with or without one better or worse, it makes it right or wrong per the intention and the production; the job at hand. Our DT intention was the click dependent production. Somebody in a practice room trying to do it is nothing like being on stage with the real guys with all of the monitoring anomalies and weird stuff that happens during the show that make it difficult to play. I know because I had to be in a practice room first.

For nothing but pure humor, if any of you could hear the click track I had in my ears with most DT tunes, you could end up in a 5150 insane asylum 😉 It is actually funny it's so out there. Often, it was not as much fun as a night of darts & beer to have the whole show on my back every night in that particular aspect, yet it was a true joy to have a challenge and to share that with a group of people that were like minded in trying to be the best we could every night with the production. I'm sure they are all enjoying challenges in a similar but different way now.

I wonder if anyone criticizing click track use actually get through a Dream Theater song to know, by experience, what they’re dealing with, with the same click that I had changing meters tempo and divisions each night? Try The Alien, LNF, A View FTTOTW, Outcry, PBD, or an easier one like Bridges in the Sky. If anyone wanted to experience it, you could go to my YouTube channel to download that video where you can hear me with the click live, remove the drums and then play to the click. Record it in one-take and post it for the world to see. It has its coolness and unique feel once you practice it a lot. It’s its own vibe/feel and was pretty satisfying once I got it locked. It took work.

What you witness on that channel is not just one take, but it's done every night like that. I just plucked that video from a database of them, I didn't specifically choose it. I could not go off the click at all, otherwise it would flam with all of the stuff also being timed to it. Does that make sense?

I hope hearing directly from me helps the cause of diffusing assumptions about it, along with how I was required to play every single night in order to make the production tight and find joy in that task and that challenge.

The discipline pays off when it comes time to making a DVD containing 100's of thousands of hits from different sources in a 2.5hr period.

When drum solos were included in the show, My drum solo on Luna Park was the most liberating thing free of the click ever and so much fun, but 4th Wall was to click. It was another layer of unimaginable pressure to play with a click track knowing the song had to come back in perfectly. Drum solos were not included in the show after that.

I preferred to embrace the challenges and just do what needs to be done and then get on with it and move on.