Terry Date interview (excerpts)

With bands like Soundgarden and Dream Theater, I didn’t get involved with tunings or arrangements so much. I would try and capture them as live as I possibly could. I’d try to capture the vitality of the live show. I wanted them to feel like what they had done on their own was valid, and really good. Then it came down to performance issues and whether or not they were pulling something off in a convincing way. But I didn’t get too involved with micro-managing what they were doing.

-----

Recording Dream Theater’s debut, When Dream and Day Unite, must have been a completely different experience.

We did it at a studio outside of Philadelphia [Kajem/Victory Studios]. I went out to New York to meet with them a week or two before we started, and stayed with Mike Portnoy [drums]. We’d go into rehearsal in a basement underneath a beauty salon; we couldn’t start ‘til nighttime. I don’t make a lot of comments or suggestions during rehearsals. I observe the band and see who the dominant person is; who likes to make decisions. I look at those dynamics. So, after about three days of rehearsal, I was with Mike all day before we went in. I said, “Mike, just so I can get a grip on what you guys are doing, let’s sit down with these songs, chart these things out, and make some arrangement notes so I can keep up with you guys.” We grabbed the first song, and I said, “Just give me time signatures so I know the song is in whatever time signature it’s in.” And he replies, “Okay, the first bar of the intro is in 3/4, the second bar of the intro is in 6/8, the 3rd bar is in 4/4.” [It turns out] every bar was a different time signature! [laughs] So after about 5 minutes of that, I said, “Mike, forget about it...” In rehearsal, Mike used to chew sunflower seeds while he played, and his drum set was caked with sunflower seeds – all around the rims – and the heads had been on there for years. The last day of rehearsal we were going to grab the gear and head to the studio, and I said, “So, Mike, you have heads for these?” And he goes, “What?” He hadn’t changed his drum heads in years, and was going to record the album with those drum heads! I thought that was funny, but it goes to show you he gets good tone and good sound out of his playing. We did put new heads on, by the way. But those guys practiced non-stop. The bass player, John Myung, would go to the studio at six in the morning. The door heading into the lounge had a little loft that was for storage; he would throw a cushion or pillow up there and practice his bass for hours before everybody else showed up. By the time I’d come in, his fingers would be bleeding from practicing. He was just insane that way! John Petrucci [guitar] was the same way. He practiced all the time, and because of that preparation that record took us three weeks, from start through the mix!