John Petrucci

Musician

1967-07-12

Quotes by John Petrucci

• I've always employed a melodic style with my leads, placing strong emphasis on infusing romantic sensibilities into what I'm trying to say. Those big, epic melodies come from influences like Pink Floyd, Journey, Marillion... bands that have these guitar parts that are just soaring!

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• You can approach the guitar like a voice. That's the best way of looking at it. If you are singing, you can't keep going a million miles an hour. You can only fit so many syllables in, so think about what you can sing through your guitar. Players like David Gilmour and Neal Schon are great at that kind of thing.

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• We toured with Iron Maiden and we opened and they'd come in later and I didn't have a lot of time to get to hang out with those guys. Whenever you did, whether it was sitting down at catering or something, you tried to take advantage and just hang out and talk and trade stories.

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• I wanted to go to Berklee College of Music because that's where Steve Vai went - I was total tunnel vision.

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• When you reminisce, you don't say, 'Remember that time you got sued by so-and-so?' No, you say, 'Remember when we played here and it was unbelievable, and we went out for that incredible meal and that funny thing happened?' Those are the important moments.

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• Before you can apply chromatic ideas to scales and arpeggios, you have to get the chromatic scale itself under your fingers. You should learn it up and down the neck, and become comfortable with the fingerings.

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• The style of music that we're playing, this progressive metal style, has always been an upstream battle for us. We don't usually get a lot of commercial exposure.

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• Before Dream Theater took off I used to teach a lot, and one of the things my students often asked me was how to apply the chromatic scale to practical playing situations. You see, their other teachers would give them chromatic warm-up exercises without providing any explanation of how important and versatile this scale actually is.

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