How you finding being in the UK?

Yes, it’s good. I just got here last night, it’s a little hot through some parts of Europe, and everything is going well.

You’re out here in support of your new album THE RHYTHM OF TIME. When you actually sat down to record this album, what kind of personal and musical goals, as well as perhaps messages, were you trying to get across?

What happened was I had a limited window of opportunity to actually create a new album between the end of the Dream Theatre tour and the beginning of the new tour, and there were a couple of things that inspired it. One of which was I had a lot of creative intensity building up inside myself musically, so I wanted to make a new album. The other thing is I had a commitment contractually to produce a new album and so between those elements it was definitely something I wanted to work out.

The basic idea for it started out with a walk, with my wife Danielle, and I was telling her how much I wanted to do this album but I didn’t know how I would do it in the time frame. She’s a producer of theatre so one of her jobs is to figure out how to get things done. She looked at me calmly and said, “what about if you spend two weeks in the studio, turn off your phone and your e-mails and just get it done.” And I was like well ‘that sounds like an interesting idea’, scary too though because I didn’t know just how much material I could feasibly write in that amount of time. After a bit of time I thought, ‘you know what, I’ll give it a try, at least I can go in the studio. I’ll write as much music as possible, and as long as you don’t mind me spending two weeks away from the family…’

So we went home and scheduled the whole thing, and I began my whole compositional process. My goal in all of this was to really get across a lot of the ideas that I’ve built up over the last 2 or 3 years in my experience as a musician; playing with Dream Theatre, playing out live all the shows that I’ve played; and also enjoyment of some of the new technology that has come into my life, like some of the equipment I’ve been using. There was a lot to express, and there was a short amount of focused time to do it. I felt it was important for me to just get it out there, and let people hear what was creatively on my mind.

I’m a guitarist myself and a huge fan of Joe Satriani, and I noticed he’s on your album alongside some of the industry’s session elite. How did you end up with so many amazing musicians on the album?

Well luckily my address book has grown over the years and Joe’s in it because we where on summer tour with him a couple of years ago. We became very friendly, I’d listened to him play every night, and he’d done the same to me. So I just said to him one day that I’d love to have him playing on my new CD, as a guest artist, and would be interested. He said “yeah sure Jord that sounds really cool.” When it came time to do it, I called him up and sent him the tracks and that was it really.

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I’m a fan of experimental and prog rock, I have quite a few Vai, Satriani, Johnson, Dream Theatre and other USA albums. When I sit down and listen to them not only does the music blow me away but also the hugeness and the complexity of the music. I’m like ‘how the hell do they write these colossal pieces.’ I was just wondering if you could maybe give us an insight?

It’s a lot of compositional techniques. For instance I’ll use a classical technique, I’ll grab a piece of music and a pencil and just start writing some notes and look at them and write a few more notes. Another way is I’ll just have my sequencer and just play a part, for instance a bass part or something, like on the beginning of track 5 Bar Hopping…. Then I know I’ve got the beginning of a piece and it just builds up. I’d add some scratch drum recordings, and then orchestrate a little bit. Usually it happens in sections, so I’ll compose like eight bars, and then those 16 bars or whatever number and then I’ll listen back and go, ‘that’s cool.’ Then I’ll pick a sound and improvise just a little bit for as long as it keeps flowing and feels right. And if it goes well, then that can become like my next eight bars. Sometimes I just play off the cuff and it just happens to work… So it can be anything from just scribbling notes on paper to playing a part, and creating a small section, then looking at the next section and just listening and imagining what could come next. Or maybe just preparing a piano sound and listening to 8 bars and just start playing something right after that ends.

Sometimes it’s just a matter of thinking about lines and melody, or it’s just a real combination of methods. I mean none of it is easy, sometimes I’ll get a rush of inspiration and come up with eight or sixteen measures really quickly. The sequencer helps; it shows you the parts on the screen and I can look at it and add exactly the right thing or bass line or part to match up to what I played. The keyboard part can sometimes be like a stencil or drawing, where eventually I’ll take it out, but it gives me enough information. It’s like the keyboard is so versatile you can use it to outline a whole idea of something that turns out to be whole band’s arrangement.

Stylistically, I come from a classical background. When I completed my studies I got very into playing strange music in synthesizers, and I got more into the progressive rock thing and jazz fusion. I’m one of those people who combines all those styles into my own composition, and that comes very easy to me. My style has always been a combination of the various elements that I listen to.

I personally think there is a heavy funk influence on the new album. Was that intentional or just something natural that occurred.

Funk?

Yeah especially on Bar Hopping…

I don’t know. That’s cool, but it’s just something that came out when I played it.

Besides the album what else have you been up to this year?

I’ve been very busy. Dream Theatre’s been on tour for most of the year. We’ve shot a new DVD, LIVE IN BUDOKHAN that’s going to come out in a few months so that’s been keeping us very busy. As a matter of fact we just did three shows in Italy which was one of the main reasons I came over to Europe to do promotion. Then when I get home I’m going to continue promotion for the new album. I’ve got a distributor’s convention in New Orleans and I’m also doing a solo concert in New York on the 25th of July. I also have a concert with Rod Morgenstein in August and I also have after that five weeks of touring with Dream Theatre as well! So things are not quite slowing down yet, and after that we are recording the new Dream Theatre album.

Besides that I’ve been pretty busy with the constructional things too - I have a service on my website called The Online Conservatory that contains many files, MP3 samples and stuff. It’s set to be from beginner to advanced and cover a wide variety of subjects from theory to technique to riffs, and it contains some of my material from Dream Theatre. It’s set up to be a paying service, and it’s pretty much ready for prime time and ready for me to start talking about it. I’ve been working on it for two years.

Also, I have a book coming out based on The Conservatory as well as an audio CD that will go along with the book coming out on Cherry Lane publishers and distributed by Hal Leonard called Total Keyboard Wizardry. And finally, as far as projects go, I have something that has been long awaited which is the Dream Theatre Keyboard Anthology which people have been requesting for years; about having access to the music and notation from Dream Theatre. So I went to Warner and said a lot of people are interested. I found out that they normally only put out drum and guitar books, so the fellow I work with (Aron at Warner), said let’s do it. I have an online transcriber who helps me with my book, and my online Conservatory. His name is Chris Romero, and he started to help me on the anthology, and right now it looks like it’s coming out at the end of this month. It looks like it’s going to be really accurate too..

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You have done a lot of touring over the years and you have other commitments to family and friends. What’s it like for you being away from your family and stuff for such lengthy periods of time?

Well you know it can be rough. My life is a very different kind of balancing act to the people who work a normal nine to five life. When I’m home I’m really home and with everyone and there is nowhere else I need to go. If I’ve got a project then it’s a different story, but in general every touring musician has the same problem. It’s great when your home and you have nothing else to do, but when you’ve got to tour you know that’s what you gotta do.

What kind of things do you do to relax before and after gigs to chill out?

Well before a gig I’ll usually do things like stretching or yoga and stretch my fingers a bit. I try my hardest to make sure that when I walk out on stage I’m in a calm place in my mind. A lot of times conditions will just suck you into al the excitement of the gig, and other outside influences in and it makes it hard to concentrate.

So over the years I’ve literally worked on the ability to get myself in a head state to go out and play, especially with Dream Theatre which is very complicated music and demands that you remain focused. Our’s is the most boring band as far as drink and drugs go. I mean if you want to party it ain’t worth coming out with Dream Theatre!

After the gig, we have a quiet time to unwind and relax, and think about what happened before and during the gig. It’s sometimes a bit of a weird feeling, especially after a big show that was so lively and where all the fans were going wild. You get so ecstatic afterwards it’s very easy to have it feel like a kind of let-down. So it’s important to me, after I’ve had a little bit of quite time, to go out and socialise with the fans - especially in some town where we’ve built up such an immense following over the years. We go out and party a bit and that kind of balances that feeling, after which we just go and chill on the bus.

You’ve done a lot so far, what are your plans for the future?

Plans for the future? We are going on tour with Yes and making a new album, and I’ve been chipping away at the new Morgenstein album. I also have my Conservatory to work on, so there are many things I want to do, As long as I have the energy I’ll be doing them, but I want to come back to Europe and do some shows with Rod.

Ade