Dream Theater

dtguitarfan wrote: Ambient Hurricanes wrote: I see ADToE as a culmination and refinement of everything they've done up to this point.  They brought back the tightness and coherence of the songwriting from the early days and incorporated all of their influences from their career into one story: not a literal one, but an emotional one, as Jordan Rudess said in an interview.  In my opinion, it's their best-composed, most coherent, and most powerful album I've heard from them. THIS!!!!! I love it when I find someone who agrees with me on this album.

Ambient Hurricanes wrote: I see ADToE as a culmination and refinement of everything they've done up to this point.  They brought back the tightness and coherence of the songwriting from the early days and incorporated all of their influences from their career into one story: not a literal one, but an emotional one, as Jordan Rudess said in an interview.  In my opinion, it's their best-composed, most coherent, and most powerful album I've heard from them.

THIS!!!!! I love it when I find someone who agrees with me on this album.

jampa17 wrote: darkshade wrote: ^ Agreed. The end section of Octavarium is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever made. So powerful and uplifting. It gets me every time. Exactly my point. I tend to believe that fans that said that only the 90's material of them is good, I think it's a bit of a nostalgic notion. I feel chill up my spine in at least two songs of every album of them and that's inspiration...

What one considers inspiration is also relative to each one's expectations, perceptions and these are further influenced by one's cultural background and previous exposure to music.  I am not elaborating on that this time because I would have to then draw comparisons and I don't like where that goes on a DT thread.  I will restrict myself to saying that I have largely regarded and found DT to be technical metal music and the only reason I prefer the 90s albums to the more recent ones is they were written more tightly.   I don't find much difference in terms of emotional resonance barring Awake.   They need a better singer to do something about that, period.


Edited by rogerthat - May 24 2012 at 20:10

darkshade wrote: ^ Agreed. The end section of Octavarium is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever made. So powerful and uplifting. It gets me every time.

Gerinski wrote: As I have said before I have not been convinced by anything they have done after Six Degrees, but I respect them a lot. And not only for how proficient they are at their instruments. In particular Portnoy, Petrucci and Rudess hold all my respect for how hard workers they are. They never stopped, being it side projects, clinics, playing covers, collaborations...., they are extremely prolific and didn't get lazy sleeping on their success. Kudos for that.   Having said that, I find that (mainly Petrucci and Portnoy, and in the last years Rudess too) base their "proficiency" too much in technicallity. They have quite many instructional videos which are technically impressive but at the end of the day they have only taught you that you have to practice more and more hours with every conceivable kind of scale or arpeggio, that your early morning warm-up exercise must be a collection of scales getting faster and faster at each round. Technique is certainly a great help for musicians but it must not be the end. Technique must be a tool allowing musicians to display their inspiration with less limitations. They hardly care to teach you how to write some nice-sounding melody, how to make harmonic arrangements or how to get a good sound out of your instrument.   Here is where I feel that DT have gone backwards. Up to Six Degrees I could find true inspiration in their music, which they could freely deploy thanks to their great technique. I personally feel that ToT was quite the same but the heavier nature of the music did not fit my taste so I still do not blame anything on them up to this album, it's just my taste. But after ToT I feel that the true inspiration has faded and they rely too much on their technical skill (with some songs and passages being still great of course, I just mean it as a general feeling for complete albums).

HarbouringTheSoul wrote: Frederik wrote: Let's talk  similarity: listen to Solitary Shell, from 6DOIT... and then listen to 'Solsbury Hill' by Peter Gabriel :D If the first wasn't directly inspired by the latter I'd be very surprised... although I do prefer Solitary Shell I thought this was both deliberate and a well-known fact.

Gotta post here to see if anyone agrees with me...

lol, we are both agreeing to the same comment!  

HarbouringTheSoul wrote: We need to distinguish between DT the performers and DT the artists. It would be unreasonable not to respect the former for their skills. The latter is totally up to you.

THIS!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you! Finally someone sees where I'm going.

Like in my analogy, I see beauty in DT's music. I don't CARE if other people do, but I can't understand if you don't at least respect them for their ability.

dtguitarfan wrote: rogerthat wrote: dtguitarfan wrote: Did I not clearly make a distinction between love and respect? Somebody help me out here please.... Yes, your friend may choose Beatles and Pink Floyd over DT. But does he respect DT? That's all I said... Like me, he likes the early albums and doesn't care for a lot of the later output. I don't see the point here...if an album is not to somebody's liking, what difference does it make if the musicians are talented or mediocre?  A mediocre album remains a mediocre one, even if it involves a high level of technicality.  You don't mean to say there are no mediocre jazz rock albums? I'm saying there's a difference between liking music because you enjoy it, and respecting it. I like Dream Theater. I don't like Behold the Arctopus, but I respect them. Let me put it this way. Suppose you had a daughter. Suppose she got into gymnastics. And suppose a friend told you "oh, then you MUST like (insert olympian's name here)." Your reply might go something like this: well, I never knew much about gymmastics, and while I find watching my daughter do a gymnastics routine to be beautiful thing, I don't really enjoy watching other people do them. But I can respect their ability. Do you see the difference? Now, your friend, the gymnastics expert, DOES find beauty in those amazing olympians, though you don't. But that's ok. But you can at least respect the Olympians. But if you said to your friend "oh pff, I don't see why anyone would want to watch those people. It's so over the top!" Your friend would most likely have a hard time understanding why you can't at least respect their ability.

Art is not Olympics, not even gymnastics, one of the most beautiful of Olympian events.  I think you are misinterpreting what I said.  I repeat, nobody is going to say DT's musicians are bad just because they don't like it.  But that doesn't oblige anyone to respect their ALBUMS.  Technical virtuosity alone is not enough to make a music album worthy of respect.   DT's albums are not mediocre songwriting wise but say we were talking about a boring Malmsteen album.   I can immediately see that Malmsteen is a technically accomplished guitarist and I don't even need to play guitar to know that but why should I respect his albums for that reason alone?  That doesn't make any sense to me.  A bad album is still a bad album even if the musicians show off the most amazing chops on it.