How did Mike, John, Jordan and Tony determine what direction to go in when they got together for the first Liquid Tension Experiment album?
MP: Originally, we all wanted to go completely and spontaneously improvised, with nothing but jams. 3 Minute Warning is a track like that. So our idea was to do the whole album that way – don’t preconceive any single riffs – hit record and for a couple days just go for it. But Magna Carta was really nervous about that – they wanted some songs. So what we did is left it open and got together one day at my house, just for one rehearsal, and threw some ideas out so that we would have some concrete licks and riffs to work with. That first day, we ended up coming up with skeletons for Paradigm Shift, Kindred Spirit and Universal Mind. We had skeletons of songs to work with and then left the element of spontaneity open for a lot of the songs like 3 Minute Warning, Chris & Kevin’s Excellent Adventure and The Stretch. Also, as a backup, I chose two songs for us to cover – so in a worst case scenario if we didn’t have enough material we could always do two covers. We were going to do Peaches en
Related Questions
- How did Mike, John, Jordan and Tony determine what direction to go in when they got together for the first Liquid Tension Experiment album?
- Will Mike ever release Dream Theater/Liquid Tension Experiment/TransAtlantic/OSI songs on CD without the drums (as he has for clinics)?
- How is Jordans role in Dream Theater different from Liquid Tension Experiment?
