New Dream Theater song - The Gift of Music

[The Mirror]

RE: Labrie doing other characters, I wasn't really paying attention to the lyrics, but is there any of that heinous stuff he did like on "Home" where he's trying to do a woman voice? If that happened, I thankfully didn't notice.

See. That's why I'd really love to have guest-singers. At least for the female parts.

He tried to voice in fact two women on the record. The young daughter of the Emperor and his wife.

In short: It didn't work.

 

[Andromalia]

Funny how some releases are so overanalysed. In my days, young ones, you could have only two outcomes ".... yeah" or "What's that .... ?"

 

[The Mirror]

Funny how some releases are so overanalysed. In my days, young ones, you could have only two outcomes ".... yeah" or "What's that .... ?"

If one band gets analysed it's Dream Theater. Hell, their songs are even used as examples in musicology.

 

[Ralyks]

Hell, their songs are even used as examples in musicology.

I can actually attest to that

I still haven't listened to the album all the way through yet, meanwhile, I'm momentarily about to grab tickets to the Radio City show in NYC....

 

[A-Branger]

Funny how some releases are so overanalysed. In my days, young ones, you could have only two outcomes ".... yeah" or "What's that .... ?"

back in the day I remember when people were bitching all over the place over how "commercial" and "sell out" Falling Into Infinity was, and the whole "thats not DT blah blah". Today that album can be one of their "classics"

Same with Train of Though, now everyone Loves it

 

[Duosphere]

back in the day I remember when people were bitching all over the place over how "commercial" and "sell out" Falling Into Infinity was, and the whole "thats not DT blah blah".

Yep I remember that, and I remember I thought "Gosh this world is crowded by brainless people!", I wasn't wrong at all

 

[DLG]

FII has some very ....ty radio-bait songs (You Not Me, Hollow Years), but overall it was a very natural progression for them after Awake.

Much more natural than everything that came later.

 

[Kwirk]

FII has some very ....ty radio-bait songs (You Not Me, Hollow Years), but overall it was a very natural progression for them after Awake.

Much more natural than everything that came later.

Hollow Years is my jam

 

[Sephiroth952]

Hollow Years is my jam

Right? Specially the Budokan version.

 

[Mr. Big Noodles]

If one band gets analysed it's Dream Theater. Hell, their songs are even used as examples in musicology.

Source? I suspect you are using the wrong word here. Musicology largely involves the history of music, historic performance practice, that kind of thing. You can look at the table of contents from back issues of The Journal of Musicology to get an idea of what the field is about. Here's a year's worth of that journal:

Vol. 32 No. 1, Winter 2015
Vol. 32 No. 2, Spring 2015
Vol. 32 No. 3, Summer 2015
Vol. 32 No. 4, Fall 2015

Basically a lot of stuff about the history of music long before your great great great grandparents were little more than a twinkle in the milkman's eye. Discussions on notation in European music of the middle ages, rhetoric in the music of the high Baroque period, how 19th century Viennese homosexual culture and gay code words manifest in Franz Schubert's music, that kind of thing. I don't think you mean musicology, though a musicologist could potentially talk about historic continuity and development in progressive rock since the late 1960s, and Dream Theater could be mentioned in that context. An ethnomusicologist might look at the concert culture of Dream Theater, or even discuss lyrical themes in The Astonishing in comparison to 2112 and Joe's Garage, which I mentioned before. However, an ethnomusicologist is just as, if not more, likely to discuss the paradigm of disenfranchisement in Juggalo subculture and the role of Insane Clown Posse in the formation of cultural cohorts (with figures comparing Faygo sales in relation to quarters during which ICP is touring), so I don't think DT would be singled out in either musicology or ethnomusicology because they are "analyzable." All music can be analyzed, after all. (There's an article that bridges the gap between historical musicology and ethnomusicology, discussing the influence of the 20th century Early Music movement on popular music. This is absolutely applicable to metal with a medievalist/Baroque bent, including Dream Theater, Yngwie Malmsteen, Rhapsody, Van Halen, AC/DC, Randy Rhodes, so on and so forth. Check it out: Elizabeth Upton - Concepts of Authenticity in Early Music and Popular Music Communities)

I'm guessing what you mean is that Dream Theater has been featured in academic music theory publications. Music theory looks at the actual structural elements of music and tries to create descriptive and/or predictive models of a repertoire. Check out a couple of articles typifying popular music studies in music theory:

Gilad Cohen - Expansive Form in Pink Floyd's "Dogs"
David Heetderks - Hipster Harmony: The Hybrid Syntax of Seventh Chords in Post-Millenial Rock

As for Dream Theater, all I've been able to find so far is a PhD thesis and an article by the same author, Richard McCandless.

MTO 19.2: McCandless, Metal as a Gradual Process

http://diginole.lib.fsu.edu/islandora/object/fsu:180880/datastream/PDF/view

That's not surprising, really. Dream Theater is a highly visible band representing the current incarnation (or at least a recently canonized incarnation) of an important popular music tradition. They lend themselves to analysis because they are a recognized name that embodies some very typical traits of progressive metal. If I mention "prog metal," you're going to think "Dream Theater," just like if I mention disco, you're going to think "Bee Gees." I'm actually surprised that more hasn't been written on DT, as far as I can see (and McCandless mentions this void in popular music scholarship in the introduction to his thesis). Complexity and outlying practices are interesting case studies in music theory, but that doesn't preclude analysis of structures that are so typical that they might initially be taken for granted or described as mundane. For example, here is an article on repetition in EDM.

If you're talking about something along these lines that I haven't listed yet, please do let me know as it might help me with a project that I am currently working on.

 

[The Mirror]

Source? I suspect you are using the wrong word here. Musicology largely involves the history of music, historic performance practice, that kind of thing.

Thing is. I am from Germany and it might be that we are approaching the study path differently here.

We had a seminar about Progressive Rock in Musicology here in Münster as a continuation to a jazz seminar. Of course this led to Prog Metal and thus to Dream Theater.

The fact that the professor holding that seminar is a friend of Jordan Rudess might played a part, but since Ralyks obviously had a course with DT as a subject, too, it isn't exclusive to the institute here.

€: If you don't believe me. Here is a link to a discription of the seminar. The last paragraph is in english: http://www.radioq.de/die-geschichte-des-progressive-rock/

"In summer semester 2014 students of musicology Münster attended the seminar “The History Of Progressive Rock” under the direction of Prof. Dr. Michael Custodis. This seminar discussed almost 50 years of Progressive Rock and dealed with the huge bands of the 70ties like Yes, Emmerson, Lake & Palmer or King Crimson and made the huge step into our time by talking about Opeth, Dream Theater or Steve Vai."

 

[Mr. Big Noodles]

That sounds awesome. Do you know if the seminar was recorded, or if any of the material was published? I was able to find some of Attila Kornel's work, but none of the items from the seminar.

• Melissa Hauschild: "Gentle Giant: Die große Unbekannte der 70er"
• Christiane Licht: "Die Geschichte des Prog-Rock", "Das Tastenphänomen Keith Emerson"
• Attila Kornel: "Das klanglich-literarische Konzept in Gazpachos Album 'Tick Tock'"

 

[The Mirror]

Unfortunately not. It aired on Münster Campus Radio. But they only save reports for a single year on their homepage. Since it originally aired in 2014 it's gone from the page. Though it was part german and the interviews of course in english.

It was more of a small local project, not meant for a bigger publishing. Professor Custodis himself actually published some works based on metal and prog in modern times, or a comparison of classical elements and modern metal music. Though these are all only available in german, for example this one:

https://books.google.de/books?id=s51LCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=de#v=onepage&q&f=false

It translates to "Classical Music Today. Searching for traces in Rock Music".

 

[vividox]

back in the day I remember when people were bitching all over the place over how "commercial" and "sell out" Falling Into Infinity was, and the whole "thats not DT blah blah". Today that album can be one of their "classics"

Same with Train of Though, now everyone Loves it

I kind of miss the days of not surfing forums and having my opinions colored by everyone else's. I LOVED Train of Thought when it came out and never heard anyone say otherwise. Endless Sacrifice is still one of my favorite songs by DT.

I was actually kind of shocked when I joined SSO and discovered people didn't like that album. (Or Dream Theater in general, )

I didn't even know musicology was a real word. I thought he was coining a funny term for music appreciation classes.

 

[wankerness]

The word musicology tends to only get used when describing music study that doesn't fall under composition or performance. Ex, you're not going to get music theory classes titled "Musicology" (though I'm sure there is a college somewhere that does call it that!). "Ethnomusicologist" is a word I've seen a lot, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone use "Musicology" without that prefix outside of these forums I'm guessing it's probably used similarly to ethnomusicology, where it's describing the study and analysis of a bunch of music but without the goal of actually writing or performing any, just without ethnomusicology's cultural focus (ex, someone who focuses on the music of Western white folks).

I would be curious to see a course syllabus and instructor profile for a class that focuses on Dream Theater. In my experience, that kind of music was universally eye-rolled at by anyone in conservatories.

 

[GraemeH]

Just back from their first show of this album tour.
Never heard a metal/rock band get this kind of applause and standing ovation from a show.
Practical toilet trip planning pro-tip; they put a break before Moment of Betrayal, not between the two acts like you might think.
Of course everyone was technically flawless.
Only thing I'd wish is that La Cheese was more of a front man. Only twice maybe he advanced in front of Myung/Petrucci towards the crowd.
Petrucci played a singlecut acoustic for the acoustic parts instead of his Majesty on the Piezo pickup.
The stage show is 5 vertical video screens at the back and a 4x3 array on each side. It basically shows WinAmp visualizations with the character the current line is from over the top
of it. Mot as bad as it could have been.
Best thing is; I'm seeing them again tommorow night.

 

[Sermo Lupi]

Hey, I was there too! I had my doubts about this album, but to be totally honest my heart was in my throat the whole time. The concept is a little corny, but it's a testament to the emotive power of music that the Astonishing is still very powerful in spite of its conceptual weaknesses.

This was also my first time seeing DT live after ~15 years as a fan, so that is probably skewing my impression more to the positive side as well. On the other hand, I would have preferred to see them perform their classics for my first time seeing the band...it's just music I enjoy more, connect with better, and ultimately know a lot more intricately. So there's give and take...The Astonishing was definitely fighting an uphill battle with me, but still blew me away.

Also, first show of the tour, and DTs first time in the Palladium, which is a breathtaking venue. I noticed Petrucci spent the first few songs just looking up at the decks and smiling; he definitely seemed a bit blown away as well! But yeah, the band was tight as fuck. During some of the more staccato parts of songs, there was zero ring out from the band. I don't think I've ever seen a band that tight live. I could also hear JP and Jordan Rudess' pedal clicks when they were changing tones mid-song--not all the time obviously, but they'd go from a super heavy part to a clean section and I could hear them step on the pedal from my seat in the Royal circle 50 feet away or whatever. Just incredible synchronicity throughout, and mind-blowing tone as well. Those JP2Cs really sung.

As for the overall production, I really think the light show was breathtaking, but the visuals fell flat in places. It's kind of how I felt about the promo videos from many pages back...there's all this incredible music going on, over the top performances, a great light show...and then poorly drawn and animated cinematics of the characters? It honestly looked a bit like a fan-made video, and I think they should have hired someone better suited to that kind of thing. I know the budget for that sort of thing was probably kind of low, and also that they've used the same guy for their tour visuals for ages, but when you're doing what is effectively a Rock Opera, you need to step up the game a bit with the visuals.

Anyway, that's just about my only complaint. Still coming down off the high, but it was without a doubt one of the best shows I've ever seen!

 

[Kwirk]

So they aren't doing any older songs?

 

[Sermo Lupi]

So they aren't doing any older songs?

Let me preface this by saying that I'm not going to the second show because Symphony X is playing the same night. So it could be that the second London show is old material, I have no idea.

However, when I was buying my tickets a month or more ago, all the tour resources I could find just advertised that this is 'The Astonishing: Live!' and it's exactly that: the album from cover to cover. They even play the album credits at the end. And like the poster said above, there was a 15 minute intermission just before 'Moment of Betrayal'.

They also received a standing ovation for at least 5 minutes straight at the end (the crowd was fantastic--good job, London!) but the band didn't do an encore. This makes me believe that they'll be sticking pretty close to the album setlist for the tour.

 

[Kwirk]

Aww, was hoping they'd do a best of set afterwards because they usually do 3 hour shows, and the album isn't quite that long. The last tour they did (with Awake and SFAM songs) was probably their best. Perfect playing and near perfect set imho. Oh well, I'll still be seeing it when it comes here.