Chained To The Board

On Sunday 12th of July 2004 Jordan Rudess visited Amsterdam to promote his new album Rhythm Of Time. This was, of course, a good opportunity for us to talk to the man behind the keys of Dream Theater. So Erik, Denis and I went to meet Jordan in Amsterdam in his hotel room and tried to make him talk; and talk he did!

J: You’ve just come back from Italy?

JR: Yes, I was there for a week. Three shows with Dream Theater and then I did a solo concert, as well as a Master class, in Este.

J: You locked yourself in the study for 14 days to record your album. Would you record an album this way again?

JR: I would consider it, it would be difficult to put myself in an environment as intense as this again, as it was really stressful. There was no communication, I turned off my phone and I didn’t use e-mail. I knew there was a limited amount of time to create the album. From one point of view it is a very good thing to do, because I have always been the kind of artist that needs a certain amount of space that is not interfered with, so that I can just work and focus on what I’m doing without disruptions or distractions. When I look back at the different things I have created in my career, something like this seems to work, like the Liquid Tension albums, which were composed very quickly. The reason they could be done like that was because we were put into the studio, all of us away from our families and living together in the studio. We were able to work, wake up in the morning and write music.

J: Yeah, okay, but there you created music together. How does this work when you’re on your own?

JR: It’s very much a surreal state of mind, as I was enclosed and there weren’t any people around and I was just dealing with myself, my mind, my computers and my keyboards. It was really great as I was writing a lot of music and writing it consistently and quickly. It was tiring because the stress of doing what I was doing made me physically a little sick. I would literally wake up at 5:30 in the morning, not because I like to wake up at that time but I wasn’t feeling great and I couldn’t sleep too well. So I’d kind of crawl over to my digital piano, put on headphones and I write with my eyes still shut from sleep. I would go in to my studio a little bit later when I was more awake and try some of the ideas and learned that I could write music; in my sleep! (laughs)

J: The songs on this album are a reflection of yourself at that time.

JR: Yeah totally. The most important thing for people to realise is that there is a difference between spending like, an hour per day writing music, and then three hours the next day and so forth and just going in the studio and doing it, I had a process going. The first piece was really hard, it is hard to get going to get flowing. By the time I got through the first piece it was two and a half days later. And then by the end of every day I had something that was really going and by the end of the second day the piece was really coming together. Once you get going and get the creative juices flowing and you get the mechanism of your work together, then it’s the best thing. A lot has to do with the psychological part of starting an album or a project; it’s a little scary. With me it’s like “how the hell did I create that last album” and then there’s always that question “can I do it again?” This project was an interesting experience and was very productive and by the end I got all the music, my goal was achieved. I had about an hour’s worth of music and the keyboards were basically all done. So I ended up having all that together and was able to go to my guest artists and give them the parts and tell them in what measures to play.

J: You had nothing on day one, what was your inspiration for this album.

JR: Some time had gone by since I did Feeding The Wheel, so there was enough built-up music and creativity inside of me. I really wanted to express myself ‘solo’. Dream Theater is great and it satisfies a certain element of my creativity, but there’s a lot of musical ideas and stylistic things that I want to do, especially because our last album – as cool as I think it is – is a very heavy album and sonically speaking I was going for a lot of distorted sounds and grungy things. I like it but I also like a lot. of electronic and ‘spacey’ sounds; I like typical keyboard sounds, so I felt that there was I lot that I wanted to say.

J: That was what surprised me with Dream Theater’s album, that you enjoyed it very much, because when I look at your top 5 list of favourite bands it doesn’t include anything that heavy.

JR: Yeah but I also play some guitar and like heavy music. Maybe it’s not my very top of the list but I’ve been known to crank up some Black Sabbath pick up my guitar and play along.

J: Yeah what I first noticed about your keyboard playing and especially the solos is its very guitar orientated.

JR: Yeah, I’m very influenced by guitar players, there’s no doubt. What first got me to buy a synthesizer and start using the pitch wheel was Patrick Moraz’ playing with Refugee and Jan Hammer whose playing is also very guitar like. Fortunately or unfortunately this guitar driven influence keeps people asking questions to me like “I didn’t know you played that lead I thought it was guitar”. It’s okay with me, if it’s a good sound it’s a good sound... I’m not happy that you didn’t know it was a keyboard. (laughs) Come to our live show and you can see which parts I play.

E: Did you play any guitar on this solo album?

JR: No, I was thinking about it, but I have so many amazing guitar player friends... who am I? (laughs) I was planning to sing a couple of songs but at the last minute I was talking with my wife. She was saying “It sounds pretty good, but if you sing it’s going to be one of these things everybody is wanting to talk about in their magazines as it’s such an unusual thing. If they only have a certain amount of space to write about your album, they’ll spend too much time talking about your voice.” I don’t want that, so although I like to sing, it’s a hobby. A couple of days before I started to mix I called up my friend Kip Winger, he has a lower range and I knew he could do a really good job.

J: About the guest musicians’ contribution, where you immediately satisfied with their initial takes or did you have to let them change things?

JR: Steve Morse had perhaps the most complex part to play against and it has almost like a Yes type of chord progression and lot of changes and funny rhythms. He had two places on the album, there is one particular spot in the song What For and he sent something and we had a little discussion afterwards. I was a little nervous to talk to him about this, because how do you tell Steve Morse that you want something different or better? (laughs) I literally had to have like some therapy sessions, before I dared to call. (laughs) Am I really going to call Steve Morse and tell him that I want it ‘better’, am I crazy? (laughs) But the end result was that I called and he was really nice and I was really thankful. When he sent it back it was one of my favourite leads on this CD, it’s incredible. All the guitar players were basically given an assignment to play over specific passages, eight bar, sixteen bars. My solo albums, I think, are very different to many other solo albums where you are more dependent on the other musicians to create it. In this case the core of the album really is the keyboard sound, the drummer (Rod Morgenstein) and a smaller extent, but still, there’s this new guitar player, his name is Daniel J. He played a lot of the chunky stuff similar to what John Petrucci did on Feeding The Wheel. Just making things a little bit heavier.

J: Did the guest musicians get to hear the whole song or just some parts?

JR: I sent them most of the songs in a rough form, just pointing out which part they were going to play. At least a few minutes on either side. It was all in different formats, Qbase, Digital Perfomer, Pro Tools, etc. What happens in my projects is that after I’ve created on my computer, with all the keyboards and have that all automated, I lay down some scratch drums, so people can hear where the accents are. Then I go out and I have a very good friend who is also an engineer (John Good) and he helps together with my assistant, Danny, to make what we call ‘stem mixes’. So each guy can get in his own format what he needs. We separate the bass, my leads, whatever is going to help each guy to do his job. The fourteen days was ‘cake’ compared to the rest of the project. (laughs) This was talking to the guys and lining up whose going to play and what they are going to play and sending charts etc.!

J: For this album you wrote some lyrics, can we expect some lyrics by Jordan Rudess on a future Dream Theater album?

JR: Anything is possible, but the thing that has been there since the beginning of my time with Dream Theater is that the group is very established and has been before I joined. They have their ways and in certain aspects they feel very comfortable with those. For me to write lyrics for Dream Theater you would have to go through the Dream Theater police. Like mostly John and Mike it would have to be, like, scrutinized and one I’m not in the mood for that and I don’t need to write lyrics for the group so badly. It’s hard enough having the music, like this part yes and this part no. Even though I write a lot of the music in Dream Theater, they can still say “No that’s not Dream Theater.”

E: Isn’t that frustrating at times?

JR: At some levels it’s really great to have somebody who is guiding the ship and especially in a group like Dream Theater that has this big career. It’s a lot of responsibility for them, they have to make sure that we continue to have a great career. Yeah I’m like any artist, if I come up with something really cool and they don’t like it, I feel a little bit sad. The ideas come when we play together and when I get a smile or a twinkle in the eye then it’s great, if not, then okay that was a little improvisation that didn’t get accepted. So the thing is they have a lot of responsibility and they are very good at it, so I’m okay with them taking that on. I love the parts like the second disc of Six Degrees, which was very much focused on the keyboards. But yes you can tell those were a lot of Jordan’s ideas. Maybe you can’t tell so much on Train Of Thought which ideas are mine, but that’s okay too. I know what parts I composed so it works out and the vibe in the band is very good. It’s especially good if I get to create my own solo albums and write some lyrics and decide what parts and what sounds to offer. I think that the end result of all that is that anybody who’s into Dream Theater and wants to hear a little bit more of what I do on my own, has a very good place to go.

D: Did the other guys in Dream Theater already hear your album?

JR: Yeah and they were blown away!

J: How did it feel for you when you were released from your “prison” after 14 days?

JR: It was a great relief. I was looking back on the 14 days and it was like “how the hell did I write that much music?”. One side of the brain, the side that’s not musical, is so different from the musical side. The analytical, academic side is going “how did that happen, that’s crazy” and meanwhile the other side just created the music, but it’s a very strange balance. In the music side there’s no control in the same level, luckily it happens. Sometimes it happens through a painful process, like a composer who is scratching out things and writing again and taking a lot of time. Other times it just happens, I’m just playing a little something and I go wow that’s great. But however it happened, it did, so I felt very thankful and excited to emerge from the studio and have this thing. In general I walked out and had the main keyboard parts composed. I saved some of the keyboard leads to do later, to hear what some of the other guys might do. There were 2 guys that saw me during those 14 days, except for 1 night, the night that I cheated.... One was Paul Undersinger the photographer who also created the graphics for the CD and the other was my assistant Danny. Paul would come in at 2 in the morning, at 12 midnight, he would just snap a picture of whatever I was doing. Danny came because every couple of days he would make CDs to send out to Rod Morgenstein. Because after I had finished my process, Rod would come into the studio to do his thing before we sent out the tapes to the other guys. So Rod was learning stuff right after I had composed it and making meter charts, these crazy things like 4/4, 7/8, 13/6 whatever numbers. He is calling me up and is like “You’re fucking crazy, I hate you”. (laughs) He always talks about the song Over The Edge, the first time he tried to learn something for the Rudess Morgenstein Project, which was really hard to chart out. So he was worried that I had sent him another Over The Edge and yes he was really really upset on one level, but he loves the music and learned it. The major difference between this album and Feeding The Wheel is even more than the music itself, it’s the fact that I had Rod so concerned with the music. He took up the project like it was his own. Except for the fact that he didn’t write the music, it’s like a Rudess Morgenstein album. His energy is so vital to this album and luckily he was available. He was really into doing the right thing, whereas on the previous album Terry Bozzio, who is an incredible drummer and one of the best in the whole world and one of my favourites, didn’t know what he was getting into. He was used to doing these projects where Magna Carta or anyone else would send him a tape and he goes into the studio and starts to play. It might work for a lot of things, but I think he was very shocked when he turned on this music and heard what he heard. At that time we spent some time in the studio with Dream Theater but I had to keep coming down to talk to Terry: “Oh okay I’ll send you the piano music, ohh you want the notation for the drum part? Fine I’ll send you a midi chart.” I was busy faxing, faxing all these things so he could look at the music and get through it, so it was hard. He ended up playing sometimes quietly, some great stuff but in general not full-on like I mean, ‘this and this is powerful’ etc., here we go. Which is the way Rod came into the studio, so that was a very important element for me to push through to get him on the album. The other side was to sending CDs out to Daniel J. Daniel is this very very talented kid, he is like 20 years old, who I met through a contact with Jerry Goodman. His father is a musician and had Jerry play on his album, so Daniel had gotten my number through Jerry and called me up and said: “I’m a really, really big Dream Theater fan, I’m a musician and we just moved from Israel, I want to send you my music and see what you think”. He sent me his music and I put it on and I noticed this guy is singing, he’s playing the guitar, the drums, he’s doing the bass. He wrote everything and not only that but it was really, really good drumming and his guitar playing was excellent and these songs are cool. And while I’m walking around singing these songs, I was like, I got to meet this guy. So I called him up and asked him to come and have lunch and play some music. So he did and we played, and I was playing some riffs and he’s playing them right back he has really got ‘the ear’. He’s not only a good musician but he’s all set up for a career, he’s a tall good looking guy. I think something really great is going to happen with him. Anyway, I was thinking I’m going to do something with this guy but what is it going to be? Then a couple of months later I started to work on this project and then I thought of John Petrucci helping me out a bit. But without even asking John I knew that it would be complicated due to his schedule and his life and I was like, you know what I’m going to ask Daniel to do this. I called Daniel and he was like “Oh my god, I would love to do that, that would be the greatest thing in the world!”. Daniel not only learned the riffs that I told him to, I told him to pay attention to where I am using a heavy sound and learn those. By the time he got to go into the studio, he’d learned every one of those by memory and by ear, plus he learned every other riff on the album. He knew my entire album just completely by memory, I’m not kidding, he knew more about my album than I did and I was blown away. It also created a small problem in that he wanted to play more than I really wanted him to and I only had a certain amount of time. I had 2 days to get the parts I needed. So we were working on lnsectsamongus and he’s playing tadatada trdatadata, I’m like “I don’t want you to play that riff, we have to go on because there are other riffs that I want to make sure we get everything” (big laughter). So he was like “what about playing a lead here?” and I was like “well, that’s Satriani’s area.... “ (even bigger laughter), “but I have got this great part”, “No… let’s move on”. He is such a young, enthusiastic and talented musician. So he ended up offering some good leads one of them was at the end of lnsectsamongus. I also played on his solo album he just finished it and he’s looking for a deal and I think he got some options to release this album.

J: The concert you will do in New York, will that contain music from this album?

JR: Yes, at the one I did in Italy the other day I played Screaming Head And Ra and I used some backing tracks. I also played a few Dream Theater songs because now I got smart on the last album. I said give me the music without the keyboard because I might do some clinics or some concerts. Every time I’d go and do one of these concerts, in the past, and I play a little Dream Theater riff people were like AAAHHH. So I was like okay, alright I got the message. The hard part for me in doing solo shows is organising as much equipment as I use in Dream Theater. When I started with Dream Theater I used one little keyboard and I’m still using one keyboard but there’s more stuff, there’s more racks. My relation with Kurzweil had changed at one point and I was able to use other gear. So I bought some Korg stuff and the next thing you know I have Midi messages that go everywhere and my system is very complicated. So now I still have a relationship with Kurzweil even though they hardly exist anymore, meanwhile my relationship with Korg has gotten very strong and building and I’m very involved with the Triton Extreme. This is a new synthesizer and there is tubes in it, for warmth and distortion, and you can actually see it; it’s very attractive. It also has a ton of sounds a lot of polyphonies so I can play tremendous chords without having to necessarily use a lot of other instruments. Where I nowadays use outside samples and load them into my Kurzweil, like Mellotron sounds and spacey sounds, the Korg already has all the mellotron sounds as a good example. I am like great I don’t have to load in lots of special sounds and use what’s there. So I decided to use it more and for my solo concert. I played everything on the Triton; I didn’t even use a Kurzweil instrument.

J: So another keyboard hero moves to Korg, like Rick Wakeman?

JR: Yeah, Rick Wakeman uses like 14 keyboards now, I play on one. I was attracted to the multi keyboard set-up until I learned technology when it was available. I think I was one of the first guys to actually have a computer and do sequencing. As soon as I got into that world I was always someone who was more interested in getting the maximum out of one keyboard. By the time the 2600 Kurzweil instrument rolled around, I was like ‘this thing’s like a monster’. I remember the day when I was opening up for Dream Theater and Rod and I were doing a sound check. Derek Sherinian walked up to me during this sound check and he said to me: “Uh, where are all your racks?” (big laughter). I said “what are you talking about, I don’t use racks, this is my instrument”. He said “No, I mean your other synthesizers that you’re using to create all the sound”. I remember he had a K2000 in his rack and I said “you also have something that can do a lot of this” and he was like “No, no I don’t have that.” (laughter)

J: You did the Moog Festival with Rick Wakeman. Did you actually play together?

JR: Yes, it was really cool. We played Catherine Parr from the Six Wives of Henry the 8th. It is a funny story... A few days prior I went to see Yes at Madison Square Garden, which was almost sold out. It was as if every progressive rock fan and their mother had come to this show. Not only that, but they were really, really good. I had seen them a couple of times in the last 4 or 5 years and I thought, mwahh, they are getting a little tired, they are getting old and they play a little slower. But someone must have been injecting them with vitamins, because they were doing songs in different arrangements like Roundabout in a shuffle feel. They were doing some really cool stuff and it made me feel great, this is one of my most favourite bands and we are going out with them soon. And look at this audience and maybe a little bit of that can carry over to our tour. After this show I was introduced to the band by our lighting guy, who does the light show for Yes as well. I talked a little bit with Rick Wakeman, shook hands and took a picture. But then a day later a got a phone call from Jason Miles who is the musical director of the Moogfest. He said “Rick Wakeman is playing the Moogfest and he sent me these charts and I don’t know what this is, I don’t play this stuff, would you like to do it?”. I thought about and I said “you know what, I’m interested in doing it even if I play a supportive role instead of being one of the feature performers. I am playing with Rick Wakeman, one of my original heroes, it’s kind of cool”. So it was arranged that I was going to do it and I got the charts mailed. I sat with my instrument, I made all the sounds, put them in order and made a nice orchestration of the songs. I was very organised and ready to play. So, the day comes to do the rehearsal in New York City. I drove up with my friend and I had a lot of equipment and we had to get the stuff up and it was “very complicated as it was a very busy street. A policeman gave me a $90 ticket for illegal parking! The Korg guys drove up as well as they wanted to hang out with Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson. I was like “help me get this keyboard upstairs this is insane”. So, $90 later I felt like what the tuck am I doing here, where are my roadies. (laughs) On one side of the room is Rick Wakeman’s rehearsal and on the other side of this facility is Keith Emerson’s rehearsal. I see Rick and see that his Korg is sitting on the floor in a box, mine has just come in and the rehearsal has to start. Finally Rick and I decided, okay let’s crack this box open. So Rick is on one side of the keyboard and I’m on the other, we’re lifting up the keyboard.... This was just a really, really classic moment. I’m the roadie with Rick Wakeman. (laughs) After we set up his keyboard Rick was like “Err, do you happen to have another pedal? And do you have a stand?” I was like “huh, yeah sure” (laughter). So I helped him to get organised and got myself organised and then we started to rehearse the piece. I helped everybody remember their piece, telling them what the chords are, you know the typical thing. He’s a good guy and a really good player but his mind was in other places and I think I took it much more seriously than he did. I learned the whole piece and he’s trying to remember it and showing the drummer and I’m like “oh no that part only repeats once”. (laughs) It was pretty funny, but honestly guys I’m used to that in rehearsals as I’m always the guy who writes the shit out. Academically I never was good at school and I didn’t do my homework, but musically speaking I’m always there and prepared and ready and I take some pride in that. So we ran through the piece and there is a long part that is totally improvised. It’s like a 5 minute section where he runs through different sounds and where I was thinking maybe, maybe he’ll give me a solo section to play something. He’s just playing and playing, different sounds like a vibraphone, marimbas, a violin sound and he keeps playing and improvising and he goes to the Moog and I think maybe he’ll look at me and ask me to do a little something, but that didn’t happen. The next day is the show, the Moogfest. I arrive early and Jason Miles says “It’s really crazy, if you get here early I don’t know if you can do a sound check, but if you come at 3 o’clock you can do that” and I’m like “but at what time is Rick here because we are going to play together”. He says “I don’t know man, it’s all crazy”. Finally we had to decide where on this very small stage (the show was at BB King’s) and after we had everything set-up Rick comes to me and he said “Jordan I have to go, my friends son is playing a concert at Steinway Hall and I promised I’d be there, would you do me an amazing favour and see if somebody can get me a delay on my Mini Moog.” I asked Bert Baldwin to find such a delay and I’m also trying to help out and asked Keith Emerson’s tech. Next thing everybody is involved and I’m supervising it to get Rick Wakeman a delay. Right before it is time to play, we were backstage (we had a cool time and Rick was sharing some cool stories about Yes and giving me a little bit of an insight), Rick was like “Yeah I think I used a couple of sounds I liked, it was D123, that brassy sound, and I think it was something in the K-bank, but I don’t remember”. I’m kind of listening to his train of thought and wondering like, okay so he doesn’t remember what sounds he wanted to use for that big solo section. Meanwhile Jason had asked him “I was thinking that part was guitar when it was recorded live on your album, maybe Jordan can play it?” I was in that room and he was like “No, no, no I’m going to play some different things, I’m going to cover it don’t worry”. Minutes before the show I said to Rick “Do you want me to call one of my friends from Korg, that knows all the sounds and have him go out and write down for you which sounds you want to use?”. So we get my friend over to work this out and in the meantime we borrowed a delay from a guitar player, but it wasn’t working, the jack was broken. So we are sitting there trying to fix that, I’m at my keyboard, my friend from Korg is at Rick’s keyboard and Rick comes out and what do we do..... Rick’s just telling a couple of jokes. (laughs) It’s his thing he’s like a comedian or a talk show guy. So finally we start, we did it and it was very exciting. Everybody there tells me that it was the highlight of the event. One of these days I’ll put some video footage of it on my website. So that was my Rick Wakeman story and it will continue when we are on tour with them.

J: Cool, any plans to play together like you did with Queensrÿche during last summer’s tour?

JR: Mike has spoken a little bit with them and has brought up the idea and there was a positive reaction, but let’s see. What will happen is that we go on stage and we’ll play a million notes and they hate us for doing that. (laughs) I don’t know what they think of us, they might be offended by the metal side, although our set is going to be a little bit more in the spirit of Yes audience. Mike is very concerned about which songs will blend in. He thinks if we come on stage and play a song like The Mirror people will hate us and he’s probably right. I think we have found a set list that will be a nice blend and Yes fans won’t throw tomatoes at us. Some of Six degrees and some older songs that are more mellow.

E: What has happened to the plans for doing a second European leg for the Train Of Thought tour?

JR: We are not going to do any more shows for the Train Of Thought tour. In general it is good, in the past we have come back to the same spot a lot. Like we play Paris and Amsterdam twice on the same tour. We really got to a point where we were feeling like that in certain places this is making Dream Theater feel like a local club band. We hit them hard the first time we play and everybody is excited and when we come back it is not as exciting. What’s up with that, we can’t do that, we have to stop doing that. We decided that we make an album, we go out full steam and we play as well as we can and then we’ll wait until the next time after a new album. I’m very comfortable with this new plan, it makes more sense from a business point of view and it makes more sense for the fans. Although some fans would like to come out again which we did in Italy a couple of days ago. Part of our feeling was like we don’t want to go back to Italy. I remember we had a whole discussion with some of the people over there about not doing that. Honestly what happened was that we were offered something that was very appealing to the band on every level. Mike was, in many ways, against it saying this is going to wash it out and we don’t have our production. He did everything he could to make it a good experience, seeing that there were a couple of other bands that were also playing. Some people knew that they weren’t going to see an entire Dream Theater event. I thought we played a really good show in Bergamo, it was really powerful and it was a good 2 hour set. Then I spoke to some people afterwards, knowledgeable Dream Theater fans, and they said to me “we didn’t like it as much as in Bologna. Bologna was more intense and you played for three hours, it looked amazing and was great. We loved the whole production with the screens. This show wasn’t that good for me”. I think that the lights and everything help to impact a lot of people. If you’re just listening to the music that’s great, but most people are responding to the show. If you got a great light accent with the music it’s going to make it better for everybody. Imagine that someone would play exactly like Steve Vai, but didn’t have the fan blowing perfectly on his hair and came out without make up and plastic surgery but wearing like I am today a T-shirt. He wouldn’t have the same impact. Part of the reason I love Steve Vai is he looks cool. He looks amazing and he plays great.

J: Alright my final question, what are your future plans?

JR: I have an interesting concert with Rod Morgenstein coming up. We are going to play at Berklee in Boston on the 5th of August. I plan to go in to the studio again and make some of the Rhythm of Time tracks so he can play along to and play some of the old music as well. Rod and I made some good progress on this Rudess Morgenstein project. One of these years we will see the reality of that, but it’s difficult with our schedules. We have a few things that sound really, really cool. Also I started working on some music that I want to do with Steve Vai, primarily acoustic kinds of things for a duo. I just saw him the other day and we were talking about the fact that it is a cool idea and that we want to do it. And then Dream Theater’s plan is to go back in to the studio probably in October and start ‘doing our thing’.

J+D+E: Any idea of the direction?

JR: We have been talking about the direction. We know that is not going to be anything like Train Of Thought in the sense that we don’t need to make this ‘classic metal album’ anymore. I think it is going to go more to the side of Dream Theater trying to be more progressive. With a lot more keyboard influenced stuff and I think they are relying on the fact that I’ll come through for them to continue to make the group progressive. We don’t have any music written yet, I know we all want to make a very cool, very progressive Dream Theater album. Besides that it’s kind of an exciting summer for me because there are 2 books coming out. One is the long awaited Dream Theater keyboard anthology, with the best of Dream Theater’s keyboard songs well written out and very accurate. I can assure you that as far as accuracy goes, it is the best Dream Theater book yet. It will come out any day now and it will be available through my website as well. In addition to that we are in the final stages of proofreading this book that I wrote on keyboard playing and it’s called Total Keyboard Wizardry. It’s similar, in some sense, to my online conservatory, but it is in book form and comes with a CD. It will also be released probably before the end of this month. My online conservatory has just gone through a major change, there is a big section on theory now and a big section on rhythm and drumming. So it’s expanding outside of keyboards!

J: Alright, thanks so much for your time and for letting us do the interview.