Jordan Rudess is the essential musician. The dream Theater sound would not be the same without his theoretical input and deft fingers with the keyboards and other regarded instruments of electronic sound. Dream Theater have been touring for awhile now for Black Clouds & Silver Linings but this jaunt finds them out with Iron Maiden. Jordan had much to divulge, the process behind Dream Theater, his hot new invention the MORPHWIZ and why you need an iPad.
An interview with Jordan Rudess by Jeffrey Easton
Jordan Rudess: Last night was the first night and the exciting part of this tour are the big shows with the large audiences. We have big audiences, but we do not draw the numbers that they do so this is our chance to play in front of a large crowd. Usually the opening act plays to an empty place but a lot of people showed up early for us so it kicked off well.
Metal Exiles: I would imagine you have some of the same crowd considering the virtuosity and the draw would be about the same.
Jordan: Well, its just the size of the crowd, Iron Maiden are still huge. They still can draw about 20,000 people to any given gig.
Metal Exiles: You guys are still promoting Black Couds & Silver linings and the music is again stellar. I know Theater writes as a collective but how much of you (Personality wise) goes into the writing?
Jordan: The way the band works is that there are three main writers in the group, Portnoy, Petrucci and myself. Together we write all of the music but Petrucci and myself will write all of the notes and harmonies but sometimes Mike will write some of the notes. Mike is the director if you will, guiding the writing if you will, organizing all of the riffs that we write and coming up with suggestions. But for me the way that Dream Theater works is that they allow much of me stylistically to come forward in the work. I go out and collect ideas, interesting technologys, seeing what I can get away with and bring them into the band to keep our sound fresh and keep moving forward.
Metal Exiles: That being said, how much ground do you think you broke musically with Black Clouds?
Jordan: The band is not an electronic, futuristic ensemble, we are bout tipping the hat to the art rock/metal scene and the magic of Dream Theater is really about our own particular combination of ideas together. You have the metal side and the prog side and mixing with virtuoisity you have Dream Theater. What ground we break is in how we put the styles together. From a personal standpoint and the technologies we use since I use many new things the Continuums, ipad’s, iphones and using DT as vehicle to introduce these things to the world, is the flavor of what we are talking about.
Metal Exiles: I have the special three cd edition with the bonus cover songs and I know you have performed covers in the past but I must say that Stargazer (Rainbow song) is the best yet. (Editors note: The covers made it worth every penny to plunk down on the special edition.) To me Tony Carey was a great keyboardist so what was it like covering his parts for Stargazer?
Jordan: It was fun but in that kind of that situation you have to be respectful of the original except for the possible ways of moving it forward and improving things with new technologies that were not available when they first recorded the song. A lot of times in Dream Theater when we cover something we try to add our sound to it whether it be in the form of being tighter because our fans know us to be precise but we are respectful in not changing it all that much.
Metal Exiles: On the same note, you did the Queen Medley of Tenemment Funster/Flick Of The Wrist/Lily Of The Valley with you of course playing out Freddie’s piano parts. Was channeling Freddie something that you enjoyed?
Jordan: It is always a great opportunity to play those kinds of pieces. The parts were very simple but they were very nice and they fit the song very well. It is another case of trying not to change things to much. I could do some fancy piano runs but I like to keep it true to the original.
Metal Exiles: You have a great new product called MORPHWIZ. Take us through the details….
Jordan: MORPHWIZ was just submitted to the APP store for Apple, providing it gets through the approval process quickly it should be out in a few weeks. It is a program that I worked on with a partner named Kevin Chartier . It’s a program takes the world of audio and visual and combines them as one. When you are playing on the surface, you can see what you are playing in wave form on the screen in a visually exciting way. It is also based on the Continuum, an instrument I play. It is a vertical grid to lay out the notes and on the vertical grid you can have whatever scale you want and you can you can use the grid to add expression. It also has pitch mapping as part of the program. You can slide your finger around but when you stop your finger it will automatically tune you to the note you stopped on. My idea was to give the player ways to make the musical experience easier but not sacrificing the music. Take a violinist who is sliding from one note to the next. The problem with that instrument is that unless you take many years out of your life you do not stand a chance to play it in tune if you slide and stop. With MORPHWIZ we wanted to make it so they can slip and slide across the surface to create music but when they stop they can hold the note and it will be in tune. I am excited about the whole iPad/iPhone interface and what it offers to the future of music in the electronic music world. I think it is great to get these ideas out there easily which was not the case before the iPhone came along. You had to go through a major company but before that you had to create a piece of computer software. This is an exciting time and I am excited to be a part of it, putting out my ideas like the MORPHWIZ and it is the first one to come out with my company name, Wizdom Music.
Metal Exiles: What was the biggest hurdle getting the MORPHWIZ from start to finish?
Jordan: It was just a lot of work, I am busy as a keyboardist, busy with Dream Theater, making albums so it was a huge process but it was a fun one. The guy that I partnered with is a great programmer, he can make anything I think up happen. If I want a green circle and have it move as I push my finger around a grid and slowly fade away when I remove my finger it can happen. It is all possible, it is just up to me to guide the vision of it and Kevin is a numerical magician who can make incredible things happen. Peaole are telling me they want to buy an ipad just to get the program. It is great that I can offer this program to the fans.
Metal Exiles: For someone who is not into Apple products what would make someone buy an Ipad for something like this?
Jordan: The possibilities are endless. If you are a DJ, a recording engineer needing tools, testing the sound at a gig or the studio or a musician wanting to try new gear. It is just an amazing forward thinking device, which the music world is taking and breaking new ground with. If you are interested in where the music world is going and want to be a part of it then you have to have your hands on an iPad.
Metal Exiles: You support Roland so what are you playing for them now that’s new?
Jordan: I am playing the Roland GAIA. It is a synthesizer that has is 64 voice keyboard, an analog model synthesizer. It is quite nice and I showed it at the KEYS N BEATS Summit at the Musicians Institute.
Metal Exiles: To close this out, you have a book called The Dream Theater Keyboard Experience. Tell us about it.
Jordan: Alfred, who puts this out, is a forward thinking company themselves and we wanted to do this with them. The Dream Theater Keyboard Experience offers up different exercises that relate to different Dream Theater songs . They have the song transcriptions which are very accurately transcribed and I also offer studies that go with it to highlight different techniques to help you play better keyboards.
On that note the interview ends but how can you play better keyboards than Jordan, that is a mountain to climb. His addition to Dream Theater was a monumental one and one that I am sure the band will never regret.
http://jordanrudess.com/jr
http://www.dreamtheater.net/
BUY BLACK CLOUDS & SILVER LININGS!
BUY MORPHWIZ
An interview with Jordan Rudess by Jeffrey Easton
Jordan Rudess: Last night was the first night and the exciting part of this tour are the big shows with the large audiences. We have big audiences, but we do not draw the numbers that they do so this is our chance to play in front of a large crowd. Usually the opening act plays to an empty place but a lot of people showed up early for us so it kicked off well.
Metal Exiles: I would imagine you have some of the same crowd considering the virtuosity and the draw would be about the same.
Jordan: Well, its just the size of the crowd, Iron Maiden are still huge. They still can draw about 20,000 people to any given gig.
Metal Exiles: You guys are still promoting Black Couds & Silver linings and the music is again stellar. I know Theater writes as a collective but how much of you (Personality wise) goes into the writing?
Jordan: The way the band works is that there are three main writers in the group, Portnoy, Petrucci and myself. Together we write all of the music but Petrucci and myself will write all of the notes and harmonies but sometimes Mike will write some of the notes. Mike is the director if you will, guiding the writing if you will, organizing all of the riffs that we write and coming up with suggestions. But for me the way that Dream Theater works is that they allow much of me stylistically to come forward in the work. I go out and collect ideas, interesting technologys, seeing what I can get away with and bring them into the band to keep our sound fresh and keep moving forward.
Metal Exiles: That being said, how much ground do you think you broke musically with Black Clouds?
Jordan: The band is not an electronic, futuristic ensemble, we are bout tipping the hat to the art rock/metal scene and the magic of Dream Theater is really about our own particular combination of ideas together. You have the metal side and the prog side and mixing with virtuoisity you have Dream Theater. What ground we break is in how we put the styles together. From a personal standpoint and the technologies we use since I use many new things the Continuums, ipad’s, iphones and using DT as vehicle to introduce these things to the world, is the flavor of what we are talking about.
Metal Exiles: I have the special three cd edition with the bonus cover songs and I know you have performed covers in the past but I must say that Stargazer (Rainbow song) is the best yet. (Editors note: The covers made it worth every penny to plunk down on the special edition.) To me Tony Carey was a great keyboardist so what was it like covering his parts for Stargazer?
Jordan: It was fun but in that kind of that situation you have to be respectful of the original except for the possible ways of moving it forward and improving things with new technologies that were not available when they first recorded the song. A lot of times in Dream Theater when we cover something we try to add our sound to it whether it be in the form of being tighter because our fans know us to be precise but we are respectful in not changing it all that much.
Metal Exiles: On the same note, you did the Queen Medley of Tenemment Funster/Flick Of The Wrist/Lily Of The Valley with you of course playing out Freddie’s piano parts. Was channeling Freddie something that you enjoyed?
Jordan: It is always a great opportunity to play those kinds of pieces. The parts were very simple but they were very nice and they fit the song very well. It is another case of trying not to change things to much. I could do some fancy piano runs but I like to keep it true to the original.
Metal Exiles: You have a great new product called MORPHWIZ. Take us through the details….
Jordan: MORPHWIZ was just submitted to the APP store for Apple, providing it gets through the approval process quickly it should be out in a few weeks. It is a program that I worked on with a partner named Kevin Chartier . It’s a program takes the world of audio and visual and combines them as one. When you are playing on the surface, you can see what you are playing in wave form on the screen in a visually exciting way. It is also based on the Continuum, an instrument I play. It is a vertical grid to lay out the notes and on the vertical grid you can have whatever scale you want and you can you can use the grid to add expression. It also has pitch mapping as part of the program. You can slide your finger around but when you stop your finger it will automatically tune you to the note you stopped on. My idea was to give the player ways to make the musical experience easier but not sacrificing the music. Take a violinist who is sliding from one note to the next. The problem with that instrument is that unless you take many years out of your life you do not stand a chance to play it in tune if you slide and stop. With MORPHWIZ we wanted to make it so they can slip and slide across the surface to create music but when they stop they can hold the note and it will be in tune. I am excited about the whole iPad/iPhone interface and what it offers to the future of music in the electronic music world. I think it is great to get these ideas out there easily which was not the case before the iPhone came along. You had to go through a major company but before that you had to create a piece of computer software. This is an exciting time and I am excited to be a part of it, putting out my ideas like the MORPHWIZ and it is the first one to come out with my company name, Wizdom Music.
Metal Exiles: What was the biggest hurdle getting the MORPHWIZ from start to finish?
Jordan: It was just a lot of work, I am busy as a keyboardist, busy with Dream Theater, making albums so it was a huge process but it was a fun one. The guy that I partnered with is a great programmer, he can make anything I think up happen. If I want a green circle and have it move as I push my finger around a grid and slowly fade away when I remove my finger it can happen. It is all possible, it is just up to me to guide the vision of it and Kevin is a numerical magician who can make incredible things happen. Peaole are telling me they want to buy an ipad just to get the program. It is great that I can offer this program to the fans.
Metal Exiles: For someone who is not into Apple products what would make someone buy an Ipad for something like this?
Jordan: The possibilities are endless. If you are a DJ, a recording engineer needing tools, testing the sound at a gig or the studio or a musician wanting to try new gear. It is just an amazing forward thinking device, which the music world is taking and breaking new ground with. If you are interested in where the music world is going and want to be a part of it then you have to have your hands on an iPad.
Metal Exiles: You support Roland so what are you playing for them now that’s new?
Jordan: I am playing the Roland GAIA. It is a synthesizer that has is 64 voice keyboard, an analog model synthesizer. It is quite nice and I showed it at the KEYS N BEATS Summit at the Musicians Institute.
Metal Exiles: To close this out, you have a book called The Dream Theater Keyboard Experience. Tell us about it.
Jordan: Alfred, who puts this out, is a forward thinking company themselves and we wanted to do this with them. The Dream Theater Keyboard Experience offers up different exercises that relate to different Dream Theater songs . They have the song transcriptions which are very accurately transcribed and I also offer studies that go with it to highlight different techniques to help you play better keyboards.
On that note the interview ends but how can you play better keyboards than Jordan, that is a mountain to climb. His addition to Dream Theater was a monumental one and one that I am sure the band will never regret.
http://jordanrudess.com/jr
http://www.dreamtheater.net/
BUY BLACK CLOUDS & SILVER LININGS!
BUY MORPHWIZ