wrote
The Astonishing's story, co-wrote the album's music, and served as its producer. In mid-2013, guitarist
John Petrucci began writing a story for a
concept album, presenting it to the rest of Dream Theater about a year later. The band and the record label were receptive to the idea, with Petrucci recalling, "Everybody had the 'go for it' mentality. And from the very first meeting that we had with Dave Rath at
Roadrunner, when I presented this and even just said the title, he was 100 percent on board. The involvement of everybody at Roadrunner has been absolutely unbelievable, so supportive. It kind of ignited the secret nerd in all of us that loves this sort of stuff, because it's fun, it's different." From its conception, Petrucci envisioned the story as eventually being re-worked into a film, play, or video game. Upon finishing their initial drafts, they presented them to the rest of the band, who worked on writing parts for their own instruments. In an interview with Artisan News, drummer
Mike Mangini reflected, "The biggest challenge for me was interpreting the initial music that was given to me, because there were no drums. So [I was like], 'All right, I need to listen to this, really, as a whole piece to understand where I should kind of let loose or I should lay back a lot.' All that. Just to see it as a whole, 'cause I don't wanna play blindly or try to fit too much where it doesn't belong." As Petrucci and Rudess felt that the album needed real string lines and choirs, as well as other organic sounds, they enlisted the help of veteran composer
David Campbell to assist with aspects of the orchestration and handle the logistics of recording all of the necessary musicians. Reflecting on the process for
Keyboard, Rudess explained, "Our initial thought was, let’s do it all on rock instruments and let David arrange it, but that wasn’t really thinking ahead in terms of who we are. When we go into the studio, we tend to work on things until they’re pretty polished. So we got into what we called pre-orchestrating. I’d use any sound at my disposal to place strings where we wanted to hear strings, choir where we wanted choir, and so forth—but without getting overly specific about a certain patch or instrument library being the one, because we knew it was all going to be replaced with real players." Once the album's arrangements were complete, they were performed and recorded in studios around the world, with Campbell conducting and leading the sessions from Los Angeles. Dream Theater began recording the album's bass, drums, guitars, and keyboards in January 2015 at Cove City Sound Studios in Long Island, New York, where they also recorded three of their previous albums,
A Dramatic Turn of Events (2011) and
Dream Theater (2013), and
Train Of Thought (2003). Longtime collaborator Richard Chycki, who Petrucci described as "a sixth member of the band", was again brought in as the album's sound engineer, while Petrucci served as producer. but did some writing while on the road. In August,
James LaBrie began recording vocals in Canada with Chycki. Singing as multiple characters, he took it upon himself to create unique interpretations of each one, with Petrucci offering him sporadic advice and feedback. with mixing beginning the next month and mastering concluding in mid-December. ==Synopsis==