Derek Sherinian comments

I get asked all the time about my time and Dream Theater; my memories my thoughts, what do I think about the songs, who wrote what – all that kind of stuff. I figured the best way to address these questions is right here on my YouTube channel. So let's dig in.

Bosk1: Can you tell us about the writing process itself during Falling Into Infinity sessions? That is, how did it work? Were there members who did more/less writing than others? What specifically did each member bring to the table in terms of writing the music? How did it change/evolve during the long amount of time it took to complete the album? The more specifics the better. Thanks.

Derek Sherinian: The writing sessions I remember took place in East Rutherford, At the time, I relocated to New York and I moved to Astoria, Queens, which was like 10 minutes outside of Manhattan. We were there for a year doing five days a week pretty consistently. I mean there was a time where we maybe took a month off for a summer or something, but we were in that room and we did a lot of writing. Most of the time, it was just the four of us, and James would fly down when the batch of demos like four or five songs were written. Petrucci was the main writer, absolutely. He brought in a lot of songs. My biggest contributions I talked about earlier were ‘Lines In The Sand,’ ‘Hell's Kitchen,’ ‘Anna Lee’ musically. Portnoy's a big part in guiding where everything is going in the songs. He was always very enthusiastic and instrumental in helping the songs go where they did. John Myung, I think was... ‘New Millennium.’ He wrote that intro – I think – on the stick, because that was what he was doing at the time, and then lyrically I think ‘Trial Of Tears.’ I didn't write any lyrics on this. James, I think Anna Lee was the main thing that he wrote on. Portnoy, ‘Just Let Me Breathe’ and Petrucci wrote you know most of the lyrics there. Someone asked me if the label wasn't so insistent on interfering with the creative direction, what I would have liked the song list to be. Well, I'll say that we spent a lot of time writing ‘Metropolis II’ in that New Jersey rehearsal, and it would have been nice to have recorded that on Falling Into Infinity. I think that the album wouldn't have received such a bad rap that it did if we were able to put ‘Metropolis II’ on it. But it is what it is – it's all good. I think that the record had moments on there that were really, really good. I'm proud of the work that we did on it, and I remember recording it in Hell's Kitchen, New York – I think it was ‘95 or ‘96 or whatever. We spent two months of the summer there, and it's great memories everything was very enjoyable. It was a great time.