To be in Boston, which is a great city and which is full of many colleges and young kids, and to be around that many people that were at the same point in their lives, who played guitar or whatever instrument - it was just perfect. It was a great environment.

I do a lot of the stuff that I started out doing that I think any guitar player that's concerned about the craft needs to do. It's basic practicing of the basic elements. I try to practice like a well rounded regiment of things where I can kind of do whatever I wanna do and I also have to practice the actual songs to keep that under my fingers as well.

Out of Berklee Dream Theater was born and we've been together ever since. I didn't have to taste that feeling of defeat.

We auditioned a lot of great drummers; every one of them was world class. We had a lot of fun playing with each of them and had some great jams. With Mike [Mangini] it was just something really special about what was going on.

Almost 15 with music, we have so many guitars that we developed over the years. The latest one is 'The Majesty' guitar, which I'm really proud of.

You try to play the song better than you had before.

I'm from the school of putting a lot of hours of practice into playing. But at the same time you have to write original music - that's really important, because that's the things that's going to separate you from everybody else, that's going to give you your unique voice as a music that you create.