JP Henry response to previous video (excerpt)

I didn’t mention this because it wasn’t part of Six Degrees, but the guitar intro to ‘Pull Me Under,’ probably the best known Dream Theater song, was actually done using Varispeed. The chorus on that guitar was a product of Doug Oberkircher working the various speed on the Studer for that. Petrucci actually used a Zoom 9002 processor. It was the first little Zoom clip-on processor that they made back in1990. He used that for his clean electric sound on that particular song. I’m not sure if he used it anywhere else on the album, but at least for that song, that’s where it came from.

The way that worked was I think Petrucci said they did the part at least five times. You record it at the tempo that you want, 30 IPS on the tape machine and I think the tempo was 102 BPM for that song. You play the part once, then you double it. But when you double it, you speed up the Varispeed ever so slightly and you double it like that. And then you do a third take of it. And then you slow down the Varispeed like almost an equal amount down. It’s like you’re almost like how you would do it with a pitch shifter, but since you’re doing it with a Varispeed, it actually affects the length of the note as well, which is what makes Varispeed different than just pitching something up or down.

Drama

Was there any drama in the sessions? First of all, it’s not my place to get into personal stuff with the guys. There was no more drama than any other band. I can say that for a fact. Anytime you get four or five incredibly creative, immensely talented musicians together, you’re not always going to see eye to eye on things. I would say actually they might have even had less of disagreement than other groups because of how effectively they can communicate musically with each other, which is something that a lot of bands can’t do. So the fact that they can communicate what they’re thinking in musical terms and understand it really put them a cut above a lot of the other groups where they’re just trying to explain things in sort of no man’s language kind of thing.

Somebody asked if there were any some monster moments. No, not at all. Nothing like that. In fact, I don’t know if I really worked with anybody where it got that bad, not off the top of my head.

Keyboards

I didn’t talk much about keyboards, and that’s because most of Jordan’s keyboard parts were very self-contained. He and his great assistant, Bert Baldwin, handled all the keyboard stuff internally. When they were writing songs, Jordan would map out the tempos in Digital Performer, his MIDI sequencer of choice. Once that was complete, we would sync that up with the tape machine via time code, transfer the click track onto tape. Then depending on most songs, we would get some drums, rhythm, guitar, bass, and then send a submix of that back to Jordan onto a stereo audio track on his laptop. And that way he could just take all the time he wanted. Didn’t even have to be at BearTracks for it. He could do it at home if he wanted on the weekends and work on his parts to his heart’s delight. And then when he was content with them and brought them in and played them for the band, maybe they would tweak some sounds.

He was capturing his performances through MIDI. And that way, you can tweak the sounds in his sound modules. He was using mostly Kurzweil 2500 or maybe 2600 sound modules at that point and sample libraries. It does kill me that we didn’t get to record any real piano because I think real piano through the Focusrite is beautiful. So a little bit of a bummer, but Jordan had the best sound libraries that money could buy at that point in time. Anyway, he would work on his parts and he would play the MIDI through his sound modules. We would take that through the board onto tape. But there really wasn’t much engineering going on with that.

A few instances that I mentioned, the Mellotron parts and I think some Hammond’s B3-style sounds, we ran through Tube Gear just to add to the vibe. I think we ran them through either the Fairchild compressors or the Pultecs just to give it a little something from the era that those sounds were supposed to be from.

And then there were parts that he played live. A lot of his leads he performed live the way a guitarist would record guitar leads. We ran one of his keyboard sounds through Petrucci’s Dual Rectifier and miked up cabinet. I can’t remember exactly which one that was, but I think it might be the dueling solo they did in ‘Blind Faith’ where they double or harmonized together for certain parts of that. But it could have been other things too.

We did the inverse of that for some of the songs that were more keyboard heavy like ‘Disappear’ and probably the ‘Overture.’ After the tempo was mapped out with the full band, Jordan would create some scratch parts and then we’d fly them to analog tape so that the guys could then do their parts to that. Eventually Jordan would replace those parts with his real parts after he spent some time working on them, especially the orchestrated stuff that he put a lot of time into that.

I know I said he mostly used Kurzweil sounds and keyboards, but about midway through the process the Korg Karma keyboard was released and that was the inspiration for the big title track, the whole orchestrated part. That was a very inspiring tool for him and I think that sort of started him moving more towards Korg and I think like a few years later he was like using Korg entirely.

Drums

How were the drum mics sent to the multitrack machine? Were they mixed together? No, I don’t remember mixing much together. Maybe the inside and outside kick drum mics were blended together.

What we did do is we only worried about what was going to tape for a particular song or a particular section. We just couldn’t keep the amount of tracks free for Mike’s entire drum set for every song. He would say, “Okay, I’m using the double bass part for this song.” So, all those toms went to individual tracks. I think it was like five toms, maybe six if you count the gong drum, and the other side of the kit had like three toms. So if he went from using one kit for one song and then the other kit for another song or the other side of the kit for the other song, we would just put those toms from like say the small kit side onto some of the tracks that we had used for the main kit side on like an earlier track. It wasn’t like we were keeping 24 tracks open just for drums. We were only using what we needed for a given song or a given section. And that made life a lot easier. I don’t know how we would have handled it if we had to keep all those tracks open for every single song because it was tough enough keeping all that stuff on the console at the same time – we were running out of room doing that.

Guitars

Speaking of the console, guitar mics. I was asked about that because I pointed out that on Petrucci’s main cabinet out in the live room, his main 4x12, all of which had V30s in them, we used three microphones – 57, Beyer M160, and an RE20. I can’t remember the exact blend. For his leads, it was definitely all three microphones. I know we had tape on the console marked off exactly where to set it for those sounds because I’m pretty sure for the rhythms, we lost either one or both of the extra mics. The rhythms were definitely 57 dominant and there might have been a little bit of one of the other mics in there too, but it definitely wasn’t all three. All three were only used for leads and that was to really thicken them up. I think that sound would have been a little too thick for the rhythms. We used on the stereo cabinets in the ISO booth for his stereo effects – those were just 57s – and they all went through the Focusrite mic pres. I don’t remember much EQ on the guitars, but definitely Focusrite mic pres.

I don’t remember ever using Doug’s Neve 1093s in BearTracks. They were only used at his studio for the vocals that were done over there towards the end of the project. So that would have been all the lead vocals on the title track and some of Mike and John’s background vocals on that as well. If you watch Mike’s little camcorder making-of videos, you’ll notice that for the title track, there’s no footage of James singing or anyone singing because that was all done at Doug’s studio and I guess Mike just didn’t have his camcorder over there for any of it. Or maybe they were just too busy because they were simultaneously having the album mixed by Kevin Shirley in the city.

Kick Drum Samples

Somebody was asking about kick drum samples, pointing out that a lot of Kevin’s kick drums sounded alike. I don’t know. I honestly have no idea. I’ve noticed a big difference in the kick drum sounds from the albums that were done on the Focusrite at BearTracks versus the drums that were cut for Train Of Thought on Doug’s Neve modules and the SSL console over at Cove City. I saw on Cove City’s website like they do have some vintage Neve now. I don’t remember seeing that when I was there. I don’t know if that was like a different room that was being used for something else. I just remember being in the SSL room and Doug having his rack there as well.

What I can point out is that on Metropolis Part 2: Scenes From A Memory, there are some songs on there that were mixed by Dave Bottrill. I think maybe three or four of them were Dave mixes, which were done I think at Electric Lady Studios in New York. So I’m guessing the SSL that’s down there. I’m not exactly sure what he used for it, but those kick drums to me don’t really sound all that different than the ones on the Kevin Shirley mixes, and I highly doubt they were sharing samples. People kept that stuff close to the vest. Some people still do.

Audio memory is a really tough thing, but hearing Mike’s kick drums, that’s the way I remember them sounding back then. I think all the Dream Theater stuff that was recorded at BearTracks has a certain sound to it. Part of that is Portnoy, part of that is his preference in drums and the way he plays them, and another part of it is Doug’s engineering and the Focusrite console. So I can’t really say one way or the other for a fact on that.