Rhythm magazine - powered by MusicRadar

Mike Mangini knows a thing or two about hitting optimum shape for a gruelling spell on the road. The drummer is currently in the midst of a huge run of Dream Theater dates, playing punishing two hour plus shows each night. During some rare time away from the kit Mike sat down with Rhythm to tell us all about how he prepares for such a mega tour.

Build your strength

"I wanted to collapse for three straight days when I got home [after the last tour]! What's happening now is we're all doing chores to prepare to play songs from the new album. We're all practicing. I'm taking advantage of upgrading my strength and my speed on one side of things and on the other side I'm digging into the song performances with more detail. It's two separate things, one has to do with taking advantage of being on tour and getting stronger and now I'm converting that into more speed and strength at home. Playing live is so different to being in a practise space. The other thing is I'm digging in to the songs and re-learning them because it's been a while since I played them."

Think of the fans

"We'd love to play the whole new record [on the next tour], we want to play the whole record but as far as the fans are concerned I think a lot of times when band's play an entire new record, the fans in a way want to hear some of the things they're most familiar with. Because if we played the whole thing we'd have to not play some older songs. We want everyone to have fun and be happy being able to hear a little bit of everything."

Be prepared

"We all rehearse separately. It's a very family-orientated band, not only did we become unbelievably close on the last tour as the Dream Theater family, and I know how welcomed I was and how wonderful that is, but we have the home families as well. We each went home separately doing that as well as practicing our own skills and the new songs. Then we get together and rehearse. It's great to be in a band like that where people are so prepared., You don't use rehearsal as an outlet to learn the song, but you show up ready to go. What a great thing."

Know the songs

"There's nothing that appears to be overly fast on this record, it's the velocity. As any drummer knows when you add an extraordinary amount of velocity or distance, where you have to travel one foot or three feet from drum to drum, that drops the speed way down. In that way I just have to be strong which I am from the tour so I'm ok there. But for the co-ordination it's just going in and drilling some of these very complex sections where I'm playing Ruddess' part with one limb and John Pretucci's part with another limb. It's not easy [laughs]. But still it's stuff I've already recorded so it's a matter of just playing it now having toured with the band. It's really cool."

Around the web: