Your solos should be as interesting as any other part of the song.

I'm a fan of creative writing and telling stories.

That's kind of the nature of being in a progressive band - always trying new things, moving forward.

We've always had a very strong focus on the instrumentation, and our approach to our individual instruments.

Just because something is very technical or heavy doesn't mean that it's not melodic.

I think it's really hard to describe music without alienating somebody.

I've always said that there's a huge progressive rock, progressive metal audience out there, in the world. We see it when we're on tour.

Music doesn't have to sit within the confines of pop structure, you can really make stuff that's more visual.

So many things will happen, for better or worse, in your career, and it's very easy for those things to bog you down or consume you. But when you get a chance to look back, you realize that those were not the things that were really important.

I wanted to go to Berklee College of Music because that's where Steve Vai went - I was total tunnel vision.

In the neighborhood that I grew up in - in New York on Long Island - there were a lot of musicians. For some reason, that time in history in our town in New York, everybody played. So it was all around me.

I see every new album as an opportunity to start over. To either build or improve upon a direction that has been evolving over time or to completely break new ground.

When I think of a lot of the players I admire, they could always play their parts without hiding behind distortion and sustain.

It's much better to play the guitar a half hour a day, every day, than not practice for a week and then jam for five hours one day.

2112' basically set the course for my musical career and how I approached Dream Theater.

I often use triadic arpeggio forms within my riffs and solos as a tool to create rich-sounding, poly-chordal sounds.

I'm such a huge fan of Steve Howe, I worship him.

If you practice in a focused, concentrated manner and make efficient use of your time, you will progress a lot faster than if you were to use the same time noodling without any specific goals or direction.

I think if anything, what 'The Astonishing' proved is that we're always going to experiment.

For anyone who doesn't know his work, Andreas Vollenweider is a harpist who creates very atmospheric, new agey music that's totally beautiful.

We record Dream Theater shows and I'll sit on the bus and listen to my playing - what worked, what didn't. A lot of times it's embarrassing and humbling, but that's what you have to do to get better.

Dream Theater has never been a band that hit at a particular fashionable point and said, 'OK, that's basically it.'

Of all the things that can frustrate a guitarist the most, it's the nagging feeling that he's not reaching a certain level of proficiency as quickly as he should.

I do remember one of the first great experiences of going to Europe was playing in Rome hearing the people sing our music so loud. It was louder than the music we were playing.