The Dance of Eternity

The song “The Dance of Eternity” by the band Dream Theater is the greatest piece of art in my opinion.  It is a song that is purely instrumental, created and performed by some of the worlds best musicians.  This song is not your average song at all.  It is just a little bit longer than six minutes.  It contains over 123 time changes and quite a few key changes.  A huge amount of effort was put into this song.  The song is a metal odyssey.  I say odyssey because it takes you on many different adventures, all in the same song.  The song itself is of the metal genre, but there are parts in it that are completely different.  For example, there is one part that is entirely based on a ragtime saloon piano part.  It completely changes the mood of the song.  The rest of the song is composed of many different riffs that are perfectly woven together.  These riffs consist of complicated time signatures, and do not repeat.  This is incredible for any musician to not only create, but to also remember each part.  An extreme amount of musical skill is needed to even comprehend this song, let alone play it.  Each instrument in the song is important.  They each have their own part and are never just a backup instrument.  At many times, every instrument plays synchronized parts together.  If one person messed up, it would be extremely obvious.  The whole point of this song was to make it as difficult as possible, and I think they did a pretty good job of it.