MusicPlayers.com interviews Jordan Rudess

[Podaar]

There's a thread for JM, we might as well get Jordan into the act.

https://musicplayers.com/features/keyboards/2014/0114_JordanRudess.php

MPc:  One of my favorite songs on Dream Theater has got to be, "Along for the Ride." It's such a great song, with the '70s classic rock vibe to the chorus, the melody, then you come in with this solo that's—

JR:  The "Lucky Man" solo?

MPc:  Yes.

JR:  Right... That some people felt, don't seem to like it, but other people love. It's odd. If you read all the comments—you know, you read down the comments [online] when we released the song, some people say "Oh, that's like a Casio synthesizer, lose that sound." And I'm like, "What? Wait a minute!" I'm trying to understand the perspective of people who don't like that sound, and all I can think of is maybe they're younger, maybe more metal kids who aren't used to synthesizers, and they hear that and it just hits them the wrong way and they don't get it. Like for us, it's a great synthesizer, it's a classic, and also a really great synthesizer sound.

MPc:  Funny, I played that song for some people in the studio and they all basically said, "This is amazing."

JR:  Yeah, but you do have other people that... I guess when you're Dream Theater and you put yourself out there, there's a lot of people, you hit so many different kinds of people, and nowadays with the Internet everybody's got an opinion and a voice and everybody wants to be heard, and it's interesting to see that people literally come back and say "It sounds like a Casio, lose the sound, ruins the song." And I'm, like, "I thought it was cool." [laughs]

MPc:  And here I almost re-bought a Casio CZ-5000, so what's with those people?

JR:  Right, right. And Casio is cool, Casio could be good there. Matter of fact, that sound was made on a Casio—I'm kidding! Actually, it wasn't, but it could have been! I'm sure the CZ-5000 could've come up with a nice version of that. [laughs] People don't understand that Casio synthesizers are actually pretty cool. CZ-101, 5000...

Looks like someone is reading DTF 

[rumborak]

IMHO the difference between the actual "Lucky Man" solo and his is, the LM solo is kinda an intentional middle finger. The song up until then is this smooth, multi-vocal ballad, and suddenly this ridiculous sound starts, and continues to go completely overboard. I mean, at some point the other instruments even stop, and you can almost see the other guys looking over saying "you done now?"
ELP had a lot of other sounds at their disposal for doing the solo. Choosing that specific one was intentionally grating. When JR chose it for his solo, the middle finger was missing, and all you had was a totally out of place solo.

[Aythesryche]

Oh the middle finger is there, Rumby. It's there.

Great interview btw! I love how Jordan plans on sticking with his guns and just going for whatever moves him. Glad he's not taking anyone else's opinion into consideration. 

[hefdaddy42]

Great interview, and I don't have a problem with the AFTR keyboard solo whatsoever.

[Sycsa]

Someone actually said it sounds like a Casio?  It's an analog Moog sound, which even top of the line digital synths have a hard time reproducing.

[wasteland]

Great interview, and I don't have a problem with the AFTR keyboard solo whatsoever.

And I might add that I consider it to be one of the absolute highlights of the record!

[BlobVanDam]

Great interview, and I don't have a problem with the AFTR keyboard solo whatsoever.

And I might add that I consider it to be one of the absolute highlights of the record!

I'm not even a big fan of the song, and I agree! Such a beautiful solo, and section in general (dat bass!). Similarly, I loved the key solo in BTS, and I don't like that song either. JR is usually the highlight of a song for me, so he can keep on keeping on.