Keyboard Magazine - March 2008 - (Page 20) BACK TO THE FUTURE Jordan Rudess, “Tarkus” reincarnate, and the birth of Zendrix. by Michael Gallant On The Road Home, how close did you stick to the original songs you were covering when it came to arrangement, orchestrations, riffs, and melodies? Each piece is a little bit different, but one of the challenges when I 20 keyboard 03-2008 Photo by Paul Undersinger | paulworks.com On stage at Los Angeles’ Gibson Amphitheater, Dream Theater pushes one of its epic metal jams towards a climax. Even amidst James LaBrie’s wailing vocals, John Myung’s rumbling bass lines, John Petrucci’s machine-gun guitar riffs, and Mike Portnoy’s explosive grooves, Jordan Rudess steals the audience’s eyes and ears — standing front and center, he begins dueling phrase-for-phrase with Petrucci, pulling screaming synth lines from a scimitar-like wireless strap-on controller. The jam continues to elevate as the battle rages until, in true Dream Theater fashion, the composition redirects instantaneously to thematically different, yet equally virtuosic, territory. With a smile, Jordan disengages and returns to his stationary keyboard rig. The crowd screams in approval. Whether moving an audience with the help of his brand new customized Zen Riffer wireless controller (more on that later) or weaving tracks together in his home studio, Jordan is no stranger to making progressive rock history. In fact, the man widely regarded as the standard of rock keyboard virtuosity has recently returned to his roots, recording a new solo album entitled The Road Home, a collection of cover tracks that pays tribute to the prog heroes of yore. “I was going to be a classical pianist,” admits Jordan. “That was my whole path and I had been studying in Juilliard when I was nine years old. When I was around 17, things were changing for me, and I started listening to a lot of old Genesis and Yes and getting turned on to ELP and Gentle Giant. All these things that were having a huge influence on me led me astray. It was a very important musical time in my life. “This music has meant so much to me,” he continues. “All though the years, progressive rock has been a real core. So I felt like it was a good time to get in the studio and take some of my very favorite progressive rock tunes and do them up as best as I could.” Jordan couldn’t help but include ELP’s “Tarkus” in the mix. “‘Tarkus’ is a piece that I can remember listening to when I was 17 years old and thinking, ‘A keyboard player can have so much power! It’s incredible.’ Keith Emerson was playing all these cool suspended chords and great sounds. It was new to me because I was playing the piano, and it was like a light bulb going off in my head. All of a sudden, it gave me the idea of taking keyboard to the next level myself, taking some of the compositions that I wrote and energizing them, electrifying them. “So ‘Tarkus’ has a ton of meaning for me, and on this album I did the entire piece. My version is about 22 minutes long! It’s really a labor of love. When I’m in my studio, I’m surrounded by synthesizers and I’m the type of person who needs to take the time to do all the programming, create all these sounds, and do all this orchestration, so I always know it’s going to be an intense process. It’s not just playing a few tracks and then you’re done. It’s doing a whole lot of tweaking. Everything takes a long time. Luckily, I was just working on these really special pieces.” Read on for more on The Road Home, the Zen Riffer, and everything in between. did “Tarkus” was covering Keith Emerson and his amazing organ sounds. Do I play a lot of Hammond organ type stuff, or do I take another route? There’s no way I could get Keith’s organ sound. And even if I could, why would I just duplicate what’s already done and etched in people’s minds as being the ultimate prog organ tone? So I went more the route of orchestration. A lot of times where Keith would use the organ, I’d go for some kind of layered effect where I’d use my Roland V-Synth for some really interesting color, but I’d use my Moog Voyager for the more intense part of the sound. I tried to color things a lot. In “Tarkus” specifically, I used a lot of controllers to make the sound as organic as possible. There is some organ in there as well. I’ve listened to “Tarkus” so many times and I respect it so much that in a lot of ways I didn’t really want it to be that different. I wanted it to be something that ended up being a tight, well-recorded version that could introduce people to the piece — or for people who’re already into it, get them going again and give it some fresh energy. My arrangements are a real combination of respect to the original and also trying to add my own voice. What was the recording process like for any of the tracks on The Road Home? With the Yes piece I did, “Sound Chaser,” I started by going into my studio, which is a room full of keyboards, and fleshing out the piece all by myself — just to get it going. Then I had the piece transcribed. I have some wonderful guys that I work with — Chris Romero and Jordan Bakerman of Progressive Transcriptions — that do a lot of the Dream Theater transcriptions. In this project, they saved me the time. I had Bakerman transcribe the Yes arrangement so I used that as a map to get started, which is great. And then I started really getting into it. The first thing I usually did was look for color and put together a bit of a sound palette I could use. Like for “Sound Chaser,” I started with the bass sounds, which I used for the pattern that everybody knows, the one that keeps repeating throughout the song and is very important because people are used to hearing Chris Squire’s Rickenbacker sound doubled with Steve Howe. I realized I wanted to use a combination of a Radias patch that I was modulating with one of the controllers so it would have some movement. I blended that with a Trilogy bass sound and a bit of my Roland Fantom-XR on the bass patches. I put them together to create a signature sound and that really got the bass started; the hardest thing with all this was getting the bass off the ground. Then I had to figure out how I was going to play some of the lap steel stuff that Steve Howe was doing, which is also a big element of that piece. Although I have a lap steel guitar and can play it, I wanted to do it on a synthesizer. I ended up programming a couple sounds on my OASYS and also the Fantom that fit together nicely. Sometimes I also created sounds on the V-Synth when I wanted to give more crunch. So I got a blended sound that really worked. Generally, I looked at what the musical need at any moment was, and then I started looking for sounds. The sounds then inspired how I would write or play the part. What about the drums? I’m leaving out a very important element, which is after my MIDI
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