I almost rely on other people to say, "Hey, you ever hear of this band?" And I'll say, "Oh, I've never heard of that!" And I listened to them and thought, "What the hell?"

When I think of a lot of the players I admire, they could always play their parts without hiding behind distortion and sustain. Put the time in. Hear your mistakes. Yeah, it sucks, it's humbling, it makes you want to throw the guitar out the window. But if you work on your mistakes, they'll eventually go away, and you'll become a strong player.

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

Since I'm in a band, and I'm not usually in situations where I need to read, it doesn't come up as often, and I don't rely on it as much.

When we came out, the kind of music that was popular was Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, all that stuff. That was when we released our second album, 'Images And Words', and it was something people werent used to hearing maybe, and it sort of rose above all that somehow, being progressive, or whatever.

I experimented a bunch with Ernie Ball in getting the strings to not flop around too much, but at the same time not to be too thick to where you're playing telephone cables.

Even with Dream Theater, we track in a big studio and everything. But when it comes to doing leads, I don't really require a lot of studio to do that. I need a good sounding room and a Pro Tools rig, and some Neve mic-pres, and I'm good.