The Ytse Times

As mentioned yesterday, John Petrucci has unveiled his first signature pedal from Denmark’s TC Electronic. It’s called The Dreamscape.

JP traveled to Guitar Centers in New York, Chicago, and San Fran earlier this month to demo the new pedal.

Music Radar talked to John about the pedal:

How did idea for the Dreamscape take shape?

“It was a slow build for me, really. It’s funny: For the longest time, I wasn’t that into stompboxes – I didn’t use them all that much. But during the past few years, I got the bug and started collecting things, all of these different overdrives, delays, chorus pedals. I got really into the whole boutique pedal world, and that’s how I like to think of the Dreamscape – a modded, boutique-y version of the TC SCF [Stereo Chorus Flanger] pedal.
“I’ve used the SCF and the 2290 [Dynamic Digital Delay] for a long time. They’re so great and versatile, and they’ve been a big part of my sound. So, combined with my growing interest in boutique stompboxes, it made sense for me to work with TC, particularly on a chorus pedal, since that’s a huge part of my sonic landscape. What I wanted to do was use better components, have true bypass, cool blue lights and designs, and have a real road-worthy chassis.”

They give a pretty solid history of the pedal, full interview here.

JP also made this video, on-stage, while DT was in Denmark. He talks about how the pedal came about and gives a demo with some old and new tunes.

Sources: Music Radar, YouTube

Dream Theater is back on tour in Asia, earthquakes and all.

John Petrucci told Artisan News that an upcoming show would be filmed for a DVD, but not which one. More news on that is coming soon, he said.

As mentioned, Artisan caught up with JP while he was promoting his new signature pedal. More on that here.

Source: Twitter, YouTube

A long-awaited announcement for Android users has come, as Jordan Rudess’s MorphWiz app has come to the Google Play Store under the name MorphWiz-Play.

JR unveiled the app in a video from Indonesia (that’s right, the guys are back on tour) and you can see him rocking it out right here:

The app is $1.99 and good to go for both tablets and phones now.

Source: Google Play Store, YouTube

From Dream Theater.net:

DREAM THEATER have announced a second North American leg of a world tour in support of their acclaimed and globally successful album A DRAMATIC TURN OF EVENTS (Roadrunner). The progressive hard rock icons who’ve sold in excess of 10 million records and DVDs worldwide will launch their summer dates June 15 in Rochester, NY and wrap July 21 in Chester, PA. The tour includes stops at the Gibson Amphitheater in Los Angeles and the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ plus a two-night engagement at the Paramount Theater on Long Island, NY.

Joining DREAM THEATER, starting June 16 in Columbus, Ohio and for the rest of the tour, is special guest Crimson Projekct featuring Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, Pat Mastelotto, Markus Reuter, Julie Slick and Tobias Ralph. They’ll be performing the songs of progressive rock legends King Crimson.

For the past few months DREAM THEATER has been touring around the world including visits to Europe and Mexico and are set to begin an Asian tour on April 19 in Seoul. The tour will bring the group to Japan, China, Indonesia, Singapore and Taiwan and will conclude May 8 in Bangkok Thailand.

The band—James LaBrie (Vocals), John Myung (Bass), John Petrucci (Guitar and Vocals), Jordan Rudess (Keyboards and Continuum) and Mike Mangini (Drums)—recently received their first-ever Grammy nomination for “On The Backs Of Angels” in the Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance category. The song is the first single from their 11th studio album A DRAMATIC TURN OF EVENTS (Roadrunner), which had 14 Top 10 debuts around the world including the U.S. where it entered at #8. The album also features the single, “Build Me Up, Break Me Down.” You can watch the lyric video here.

Meanwhile, A DRAMATIC TURN OF EVENTS is now available on HD Tracks, a digital retailer that offers high resolution downloads. Systematic Chaos and Black Clouds & Silver Linings will soon be available on the platform as well.

Here are DREAM THEATER’s complete tour dates. DREAM THEATER meet & greet and VIP packages are available for all dates. Please visit http://vipnation.com for details.

Thu 4/19 Seoul, KR Olympic Hall
Sat 4/21 Jakarta, ID Mata Elang Indoor Stadium
Mon 4/23 Osaka, JP Orix Theater
Thu 4/26 Fukuoka, JP Civic Hall
Sat 4/28 Aichi, JP Prefectural Art Theater
Mon 4/30 Yokohama, JP Arena
Wed 5/2 Singapore, SG Kallang Theatre
Fri 5/4 Beijing, CN Century Theatre
Sun 5/6 Taipei, TW Taipei University Auditorium
Tues 5/8 Bangkok, TH Thunder Dome
Fri 6/15 Rochester, NY Main Street Armory
Sat 6/16 Montebello, QC D-TOX Rockfest
Sun 6/17 Lewiston, NY Artpark
Tues 6/19 Columbus, OH The LC Pavilion
Thu 6/21 Cleveland, OH Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica
Fri 6/22 Detroit, MI The Fillmore
Sat 6/23 Chicago, IL Chicago Theatre
Mon 6/25 Cincinnati, OH Taft Theater
Tues 6/27 Minneapolis, MN State Theater
Thu 6/28 Kansas City, MO Starlight Theater
Sun 7/1 San Francisco, CA Warfield Theatre
Mon 7/2 Los Angeles, CA Gibson Amphitheater
Tues 7/3 Anaheim, CA The Grove of Anaheim
Thu 7/5 El Paso, TX Abraham Chavez Theatre
Fri 7/6 San Antonio, TX Majestic Theater
Sat 7/7 Austin, TX ACL Live
Mon 7/9 Grand Prairie, TX Verizon Theatre
Thu 7/12 Richmond, VA The National
Fri 7/13 Washington, DC Warner Theatre
Sat 7/14 Holmdel, NJ PNC Bank Arts Center
Tues 7/16 Boston, MA Bank of America Pavilion
Wed 7/18 Huntington, NY Paramount Theater
Thu 7/19 Huntington, NY Paramount Theater
Sat 7/21 Chester, PA Harrah’s Chester Downs

A Dramatic Turn of Events is now available “in pristine studio master quality as DRM-free 96khz/24bit FLAC files” from HDTracks.com.

According to Roadrunner’s official site “fans have responded in shocking numbers,” although they don’t say what those numbers are.

You can preview each track on HDTracks and they do sound darn good. ADTOE is $17.98, but if you go by sound quality, that is actually a bargain compared to the CD. No word if this will be the norm from now on or if past titles will be released in the FLAC format, it would be nice though.

Source: HDTracks.com, RoadrunnerRecords

OSI posted their brand new music video for “For Nothing” off their Fire Make Thunder album. It is exclusive to Ultimate-Guitar.com and, according to The Mooreatorium, was directed by Los Angeles-based artist/director Jimmy Ahlander.

Check out the video here, and check out The Mooreatorium for the latest on Kevin Moore.

Source: The Mooreatorium, Ultimate-Guitar.com

Moog Music teamed up with Jordan Rudess for one heck of an April Fools joke this year with a video and website promoting their new Biomimetically Augmented Synthesis Expansion app.

Read more here and watch the video below:

Sources: YouTube, Moog

Here’s a crazy video from Jordan Rudess from an unidentified musical app. I’ve never done drugs, but I anticipate it being something like this.

Jordan also was interviewed by VeniaMag.net, which you can check out here. They mainly discuss what went into making A Dramatic Turn of Events.

Here’s a piece:

VENIA: Many critics say about your new album that you got back to your roots, to more of the sound of nineties. That it sounds more like „Images and Words“ or „Awake“, what would you say about that?

JORDAN: I would say that one of the things that we did in this little period of time is to try to think what is it really that excites us. Something we fill in comfortable, what we want to express. What is it about Dream Theater that, you know, people love. So we looked throught it and we thought that this certain album is, its elements like melody, harmony and energy that really is what we want to present. And so, it that’s interpretated as whatever that is fine. Because what we did is that we went back and we thought about it. You know, what we wanted to take out of the music, maybe we were puting it in the last few years. What do we want to put back in or add, and this is how it ended up. We wanted to make it classic Dream Theatre sounding and really do it with love.

Sources: YouTube, VeniaMag.net

JR checked in today from New York for an update, as he mentions there is still some time off for the guys before they travel to Asia for the next leg of the tour.

Their next show is April 19 in Seoul. You can find all of the dates here.

Much different material here than the last Mike Portnoy in-studio video. Flying Colors sounds nothing like Adrenaline Mob, but it got the same treatment with MP once again recording his recording of the album.

You can get the Drumming Colors DVD exclusively from MP’s site which includes isolated drum soundtrack and full album audio. And outtakes too!

There is also a combo pack of Drumertà and Drumming Colors for a few dollars off.

Source: YouTube