A Quote by John Petrucci
Dream Theater music, there's a lot of background and context to the songs, as far as the subject matter and the albums they come from.
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The music I used to make was a lot more rock, so I come from this background of head banging a lot, and it took me a while to figure out how to do it in the context of our music.
Content arises out of certain considerations about form, material, context-and that when that subject matter is sufficiently far away.
I come from a theater family and a theater background, and I come from a philosophy that you respect the space you occupy when you work and you put everything that you have into something.
When I listen to my songs, they seem like pieces of music or art, like a painting that you look at. The reality is that, yes, when I wrote the songs upstairs or wherever, I was writing very specifically about my life or a specific subject matter that's very personal. I've never shied away from that. The vocals and the performance that come after the record, I don't think of that as confessional, but the core of the music is completely. It makes sense that people would see that as being the main thing. I guess not everyone is able to speak so candidly.
I grew up listening to a lot of player-piano music in my house and a lot of old Tin Pan Alley songs and American standards. My dad listened to a lot of traditional Irish music and I grew up doing musical theater. So most of the music I was exposed to as a kid was pre-rock n' roll.
I like philharmonic music a lot. That kind of symphonic music has always been an integral part of the arrangements in many of my songs and background scores.
I think a lot of times, artists and albums can become formulaic. You're known for a certain thing, and you continue to do that. You just change the subject matter, but it's the same song. And that's what you do.
I had a drummer in my band who started teaching me tricks to come up with interesting rhythms. Because I don't come from a musical background, I've never studied music, and I don't know music theory at all, so a lot of stuff I discover on my own are things students would learn in the first grade of music.
No matter what I do, my songs come out in a certain style, and if that sounds like Dead Kennedys, then there's probably a reason for it. Don't forget, I wrote most of those songs, music and lyrics.
We're very historically tried and true when it comes to our albums. We pick the best songs; we get rid of the songs we feel don't fit on the album, and we don't work on remixing or remastering albums.
But I always held my music up and protected it from compromise. So I just do it for my friends. I've written hundreds of songs, and I'm sure I have a few albums worth of songs.
Truth is, you make albums, and some of those songs are hits, and some of the greatest hits albums have songs that weren't hits. You have a career, the reason why we're still around 10 years is that we do have successful songs.
As far as subject matter, I'd say most of the songs aren't that personal to me. I love making up characters and kind of having fun in a different kind of way.
It's fun to take songs from a completely different context and reframe them. We did two mixtape albums called 'Other People's Heartache' and 'Other People's Heartache Pt. 2,' which were full of those kind of covers and mash-ups, mixed with film music and film quotes.
As far as spiritual influences in Christian music, I would say Crystal Lewis - a lot of her songs especially. The ministry she has through her songs has really hit me.
Thanks to our modern era, facts are incredibly easy to come by. A few web searches for your subject matter, and you have all the information you could dream of.
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