Jordan Rudess interview (excerpt)

Did you approach playing on these tracks differently than you would on a Dream Theater album?

“The big difference is that, stylistically, this project, like a Liquid Tension thing, was totally wide open. The whole nature of it was ‘What can Jordan Rudess bring to it?’ It wasn’t so much about ‘OK, this is Dream Theater. We have our fairly large window of possibilities.’ But you know, if it’s outside of that – I don’t want to call it a ‘box’ – but if it’s outside of that window of stylistic ideas, then it’s just not Dream Theater anymore.

“Like when I started with Dream Theater years ago, I brought in so many ideas – more than they wanted to hear. With some things, they’d say to me, ‘Yeah, that’s really cool, but keep that for your solo album.’ [Laughs] Or ‘That’s amazing… but we don’t really play electronic music.’ Or else it was, ‘Wow, that’s the best jazz I ever heard – we’re not about that.’ But with this, nobody said anything like that. I put all kinds of cool sequency things on it, did some Chick Corea-esque jazz stuff, ran things reverse – I just had a party. I had a big palette of colors and threw it all at the canvas.”

On the song Mew, I hear some smooth jazz-type sounds that I can’t imagine would be on a Dream Theater record.

“Yeah, sure. You know, my main gig is Dream Theater, and they don’t include that style. But in this case, I was working with musicians who felt a rhythm that was leaning a certain way, so I said, ‘Hey, let me call up an electric piano and have some fun!’ You know, stylistically, personally, I’m like jello – I’ll go in any direction. I like it all, and what I really like is putting it all together.”

The bass in Descend is ultra-low. Do you have to make adjustments to what you play or which programs you use to match up with that tone-wise?

“There’s a lot of low tones on that, but it’s cool because it’s Tony Levin. He hits the bottom, definitely. You know, in my role, I have to let go of my ego. It’s funny: Somebody was listening to a Dream Theater song the other day, and they said, ‘Yeah, that’s great – when do you come in?’ I was like, ‘What? I’m playing. I’m playing a really heavy sound.’ I have a big role with Dream Theater: Sometimes I’m the choir, I’m the brass, I’m the strings – you name it. But a lot of times I’m playing really heavy sounds.