Does Mike map out his parts on paper?
MP: Actually, I cover a lot of this in my Liquid Drum Theater video. But my charts are mainly for the overall arrangement of the song, because sometimes they get very untraditional! Within those charts, there will be a huge master band chart for all of us, and then each of us will have our own charts. Jordan does all his charts as proper notation, but mine and John Petrucci’s are more like “Am section” or “Genesis part” or whatever. And then I’ll have notes saying at that point that I want to be on a closed hi-hat and then I’m going to develop to an open hi-hat, then at the pre-chorus go to the crash cymbal. So I’ll outline where I’m going with the parts, but most of the fills in and out, for the most part – even going back to Images and Words – they are generally improvised.
