Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence (song)

Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence
Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence
Length	42:02
Working title	{{{Workingtitle}}}
Release date	{{{Release}}}
Lyrics	John Petrucci, Mike Portnoy
Music	Dream Theater
First live performance
Total live plays
Recorded	Beartracks Studios
Other appearances	Live at Budokan (War Inside My Head, The Test that Stumped them All, Goodnight Kiss, Solitary Shell), Score
Previous song	{{{Previous song}}}
Next song	{{{Next song}}}

Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence is a 42 minute odyssey split into eight tracks. Lyrically, it discusses mental health. According to Mike Portnoy, "After it was finished we divided up the sections and John and I split up the sections into six different characters and each of us write about three. Basically I wrote about three and he wrote about three and they're six different people all from very different backgrounds and walks of life, all dealing with the common thread of trying to cope with mental imbalances and things like that." MP.FAQ)

Overture

The Overture was the first part written for Six Degrees. Mike Portnoy discusses it in the FAQ. "We wrote the overture first and from there we took the themes in the overture that we liked and knew we wanted to expand into full sections." (MP.FAQ)

"We approached the Overture as if we were scoring a movie or writing a piece of classical music. For us as a band, it was a whole new way of writing and recording. Jordan's presence is felt most on the title track because he was the instigator and motivator for most of those sections. We wrote the sections around his keyboard parts since his parts were recorded first. My drumming approach for that was not that of a rock drummer, but rather more like that of an orchestral player. I wanted to avoid playing drumset grooves and focus more on the classical orchestration by doing things like multiple marching snare drum overdubs and bass drum and tom patterns with orchestra cymbals. Once we recorded the Overture, that laid the groundwork for the rest of the piece."

About to Crash

About to Crash is part II of Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence. It appears to be about bipolar disorder.

War Inside My Head

War Inside My Head is part III of Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence. It discusses PTSD. It's the shortest movement of the song, a fact which they were unaware of while composing the piece.

"It's just the way it came out. We kind of wrote that together with The Test That Stumped Them All, so we wrote those back-to-back. They weren't supposed to be broken up in to specific lengths time wise; they're all just sections of the big piece. We weren't even conscious of the lengths of the individual sections. We were just writing with a vision of the big picture."

The Test that Stumped Them All

The Test That Stumped Them All appears to be about a man with delusions and paranoia.

Goodnight Kiss

Goodnight Kiss is written about a mother with post-natal depression.

Solitary Shell

The character in Solitary Shell has autism.

About to Crash (Reprise)

This is written about the same character as About to Crash, and appears to hint at a recovery, or at least a positive episode.

Losing Time / Grand Finale

Losing Time may be written about Dissociative Identity Disorder. The Grand Finale is a summation of all the previous parts.