Originally published in Devin Townsend podcast · April 2024
Jordan Rudess interview (excerpts)
InterviewJordan Rudess7 min read
For some years now, Rudess has also been showing off his guitar skills and has even gotten his own signature 8-string model. Appearing in a recent edition of fellow musician Devin Townsend’s podcast, the Dream Theater keyboardist touched upon the specifics of the guitar and what might make it a little tricky.
“The kind of instruments that we play, like pianos and guitars, are all very mechanical,” Rudess said while discussing his creative process and coming up with melodies (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar). “So you need to develop technique. It’s very serious. I’ve been trying to learn how to play the guitar and reminded of how mechanical it really is. [Laughs] You want to learn this technique of hybrid picking, it’s one thing, and it takes coordination and timing. And then you’re doing economy picking – it’s a whole another thing.”
“To be able to articulate a musical word or phrase on an instrument takes time and practice and patience,” he explained. But then comes the obvious question from Devin – what are some of the parallels between these two instruments? Although obviously different, Jordan is proficient at both.
“It’s really very different,” he said. In particular, the biggest difference to him is in the layout of the fretboard and how the performer is accessing the notes. He continued: “First of all, the guitar is a little bit baffling to me, because it’s all these dots and spaces. I just look down quickly, I kind of almost don’t know which place I’m looking at. Most guitar players I talked to have relative pitch,” Rudess added. “And I have perfect pitch. So when I look at the guitar, I want to know that on that dot, on that string is a certain note. If that changes, that’s not a good thing for me. So, if somebody handed me a guitar that was tuned down to C, I would be pretty upset.”
Jordan was asked whether he was initially drawn to music theory and whether it was “a necessary thing for you to be able to articulate music.” He replied (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar): “When it comes to music theory, I think that I was always good at it. Because I just have a natural thing for music. I’ve never been very, like, academic. So I was able to do the music thing just because of my kind of natural talent with it.”
However, as he adds, at this point in his career, he sometimes feels like it could be a bit of a hindrance in terms of creativity.
“At this point, I don’t know how you feel about it,” Jordan said. “Sometimes, I tried to almost like erase some of the academic stuff that we learned. People start talking to me about this mode or that mode and all this stuff. I’m like… I don’t know. I kind of don’t even want to know about it. Because it almost feels like it blocked my creativity.”
However, he’s absolutely not against learning music theory. He sees it as a necessary set of tools that musicians can use to their advantage. Rudess clarified: “But that said, for anybody who is thinking what I’m thinking they’re thinking – yes, it is helpful sometimes to learn a bit of theory. Like, if you’re a guitar player, you can learn that if you’re playing a I-IV-V progression, you could try this mode over it, and it might yield some good results. So you can use theory as a tool to maybe expand your world a little bit. Absolutely.”
Another thing that comes to mind here is the emotional expression through music and emotional reaction to music. Discussing the matter, Devin asked Jordan if he feels like music theory is a “language” that helps you understand the “emotional components of music.” He replied: “Learning music theory and understanding all that surrounds a composition like a Mozart piece or a Bach piece, the time period, the counterpoint, the harmony – I think all of that is awakening and it’s just this growth that you can have when you start. Any kind of knowledge – you feed yourself information and expand your mind. I think that that could very well lead to an emotional reaction. What I’m kind of feeling and thinking is that having knowledge is a way to allow yourself to get that much deeper into whatever it is you’re doing in terms of music. If you’re were studying a Bach Fugue or something like that, and you really know what’s going on, I think there’s a good chance that you’ll connect to it emotionally more than somebody who has no idea what’s going on. And not to say that a listener who doesn’t understand how a Fugue is put together couldn’t respond to it emotionally. But I think, as a musician, or as a music theorist, that could be a very large grand experience. If you really know what’s going on and you invest in it, you learn about it, and all of a sudden, you’re at a higher level with the whole thing.”
There’s been a lot of fear and naysaying when it comes to the impact of AI on the music industry, while others, such as Nuno Bettencourt, firmly held their ground in the belief that artificial intelligence could never replace the genuine (human) soul. For Jordan Rudess, it’s more nuanced than that.
Known for his great interest and profound knowledge of all things tech, the Dream Teater keyboard wizard has been working in tandem with the Moises AI platform, which is a “technology that can turn standard audio files into separate tracks while also showing chords, lyrics and more”, Rudess explained following the release of his new solo single “Embers”, which was made in collaboration with the platform.
The musician tells fellow prog legend Devin Townsend in a new interview that if he didn’t believe AI had any actual merit for humans and the music itself, he simply wouldn’t bother with it (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar): “It all comes back to us as human beings; [the reason] why the hell we are doing it in the first place. If it didn’t inspire me, make me feel better, didn’t enrich my life, then I would have nothing to do with it. I think that there’s a lot to be said about not only the creation of music through artificial intelligence but maybe even more so about being involved in it, [just like with music] theory – if you know about it, you’re deep inside of it, you have information, then you can actually embrace it and become emotional, maybe even more emotional with it.”
Reflecting on his own “journey” with the technology, Rudess said: “So with artificial intelligence, my journey is that I help train the network, to understand more about who I am. And then, interacting with what happens as a result, gives me information. And that makes me larger, and more inspired. It’s what it’s all about. It’s all about the human being. It’s all about my own growth, really.”
Asked to define the gratification he gets out of the process in the simplest way possible, Rudess said that it all boils down to “information” and “entertainment”. However, witnessing the technology produce a melody that fits perfectly with his playing style can be a bit “scary”, he admits.
“I think it’s information and entertainment. I was doing this thing with one of my programmer friends, we were looking at my lead style, trying to see if we could get the application to play a Jordan-style lead by running your finger over a playing surface smoothly. And it actually works.”
He added: “It’s one of the things I find a little bit scary, actually. But it does work. But in doing it, it was a chance for me to really look at my style, and really study what it is that I am doing. What happens when I play a little arpeggio, and then I come down in a blue scale? Where do I go usually, what kind of what kind of intervals do I play, even why do I do that? So, I think this was a learning process for me. I think it kind of made me a better player. I get to really study what’s going on.”
Given his experience, Jordan was asked whether he believes that “the human experience” which underlines every creative endeavor can be replicated by a machine, to which he answered positively. For the Dream Theater keyboardist, the principle behind having AI create a melody after making it study specific pieces of music isn’t all that different from the way a MIDI keyboard works: “Yeah, I actually think it’s possible. Think about when we record to a digital platform. We do a recording, in my case, I’ll play some notes on my MIDI keyboard, and then it plays it back. At that point, I’m not there anymore. It’s not me anymore, in the sense that I played it. Now. It’s this digital machine that is literally playing back what I did. So I guess a question for the room is: Is that much different than if I train this neural network so that when I play 12 measures, and then ask it, based on my training, to play 12 more?”