Interview with Dream Theater

though they might not be considered
mainstream this prog metal van is known
for the proficiency of its musicians hi
I’m Rebecca Brayton and welcome to
watchmojo.com our host eric Burnett got
the chance to speak with John Petrucci
from Dream Theater
I wanted to talk to you a bit about the
new album what would you say you guys
were setting out to do we had a little
bit of a plan it wasn’t very specific it
was more like a guideline or a mission
statement for a particular record which
was to try to create songs arrangement
wise that were more eclectic within the
song some of our early early music when
we wrote it we’re really young probably
due to immaturity of songwriting
abilities we just kind of would throw
these things together one song it would
have all these different stylistic
elements found like a metal section and
followed by like a little jazzy thing
you know we didn’t realize it but that
was kind of the charm of our style and I
think as we developed our songwriting
abilities we kind of honed in on this
different style not all the time but
some of the times the music became more
focused the song would kind of strictly
stay in one direction and so on this
album we wanted to use everything that
we learned up to that point as far as
songwriting production the heaviness of
the band the sound of the band and
infuse that with the older style of
incorporating different musical styles
within one song and that’s probably why
there are so many epics on the album
every time we do a new album we try to
take a some some sort of step forward to
do something different than we did in
the past to improve upon what we did you
know if anybody would to listen to our
catalogue it’s all different it’s
interesting not just regurgitating the
same thing you can usually tell with
your albums just by the first song what
the tone is going to be more or less and
I found that this one kind of starts
with a bit of darker overtones as there
was there anything that influenced your
writing towards something a little bit
more somber the opening track was the
first song that we wrote and we wrote it
in New York right around Halloween time
and we called the song Halloween that
was the working title and it just
musically had a very you know Tim Burton
Nightmare Before Christmas kind of vibe
to it you know a little bit comical and
quirky we didn’t intend for the entire
album to be that way but that’s just how
that one song when you’re writing
progressive music how do you strike a
balance between conveying emotion but
then also bringing out the technicality
that we see in Dream Theater it’s just
all about songwriting it’s about trying
to convey whatever message you have
inside musically you know you want to
get that point across in the best way
possible if that message is something
that’s really intense it might require a
lot of technical elements in order to
make it sound intense and to kind of get
people’s blood pressure to rise
I mean the ultimate is when you can say
we have a certain vision let’s make it
happen and you actually do make it
happen that’s where you get that balance
of emotion and technicality I understand
well thanks a lot for meeting with us I
really appreciate it all right