John Petrucci
Oftentimes, whenever I do interviews with guitar magazines and we discuss my influences, I mention people like Steve Morse, Alex Lifeson, Al Di Meola - but John Scofield's name never comes up. And that's funny because he's so amazing; he's the epitome of a really cool guitar player.Collection: Amazing
When I look back and think about how I played when I was 16, and moving on to my 20s, 30s, 40s and now 50s - to me, it seems like you gain more experience, you gain more technique, you get better.Collection: Moving
I listen to somebody like Shawn Lane, and unfortunately he is no longer with us, but I hear him playing and I am like, 'That is just absolutely ridiculous.'
When I was younger, and Iron Maiden and Def Leppard and all that stuff was coming out, I was learning all those songs and trying to play guitar and develop my chops. I was a big fan.
I spent a lot of time developing my chops when I was younger. In doing so, I found that one of the hardest things was dealing with what to practice.
So many things will happen, for better or worse, in your career, and it's very easy for those things to bog you down or consume you. But when you get a chance to look back, you realize that those were not the things that were really important.
Where I lived, on Long Island, you had the radio stations that always played Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath and AC/DC and all that. I grew up on all that stuff.
After you've practiced for an hour or so, turn down the lights and record yourself playing. Improvise and go nuts, then playback what you've recorded and listen for your strengths and weaknesses.
If you practice in a focused, concentrated manner and make efficient use of your time, you will progress a lot faster than if you were to use the same time noodling without any specific goals or direction.
Before you start a practicing regimen, you have to be aware that the study of music is a lifelong process-it's a discipline. And the key to mastering any discipline is consistency.
To play sweep arpeggios correctly, you have to mute each note with the left hand immediately after picking it.
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.
In order to become a well-rounded musician, you have to master the three major aspects of guitar playing: the technical side, the musical side and the creative side.
I'm such a huge fan of Steve Howe, I worship him.
Don't get stuck in a rut. If you started yesterday's practice playing arpeggios, start today's with scales. Also, try to make a song out of what you're practicing to help break the tedium.
We record Dream Theater shows and I'll sit on the bus and listen to my playing - what worked, what didn't. A lot of times it's embarrassing and humbling, but that's what you have to do to get better.
When you watch your favorite guitarists play, notice how little their hands and fingers move sometimes. The economy of motion can't be overemphasized.
I often use triadic arpeggio forms within my riffs and solos as a tool to create rich-sounding, poly-chordal sounds.
Chopin was a master of melody, harmony and voice leading - the art of smoothly moving from chord to chord.
Using open strings is a great way to add texture and atmosphere to any chord progression.
By adding open strings to even the simplest chords, you can create voicings that sound sophisticated, but are really easy (and fun) to play. They're practical, not intimidating, and most certainly don't sound like 'jazz chords.'
I always get frustrated when I hear someone talking about sweep arpeggios. Though there are plenty of licks and examples out there, no one has ever really broken down the mechanics of the technique. As a result, guitarists have had to figure them out by trial and error.
The best way to learn sweep picking is to first isolate the right- and left-hand techniques, master them separately and then coordinate them.
A violin neck is much smaller than the guitar's, so it's much easier to play wide intervals on one violin string. On the guitar, you really have to stretch to play them.
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.
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.
If I had to pick a favorite band of all time, it would be Rush.
2112' basically set the course for my musical career and how I approached Dream Theater.
Once you've developed some technical facility on the guitar, the musical side (which entails theory, harmony, chord structure, ear training, sight-reading, composition and being able to hear chord progressions and licks) comes into play a lot more.
Sometimes just allowing yourself to noodle without any structure will enable you to stumble upon great new ideas, culminating in creating your own distinct voice on the instrument.
Of all the things that can frustrate a guitarist the most, it's the nagging feeling that he's not reaching a certain level of proficiency as quickly as he should.
It's much better to play the guitar a half hour a day, every day, than not practice for a week and then jam for five hours one day.
I could talk about technique, theory and gear for days!
Guitarists use downstrokes and upstrokes to play fast patterns, but doubling up on down- or upstrokes might be essential to the sound of a specific melody. So as a player, you've got to sharpen your picking skills as much as you can.
Rush and guitarist Alex Lifeson are among my biggest influences.
Anytime I can use open strings in a chord, or add a ninth, I will.
To me, there's no question that using a metronome develops your speed and accuracy. If you're learning scales or you're jamming on parts that you can't quite pull off, it's a must.
When you use a metronome, you'll start to notice where the notes are falling, if they're on the beat, behind the beat, between the beat, and so on.
I've listened to musicians who say that using a metronone makes you robotic, that it decreases your 'feel.' That's ridiculous. Either you have feel or you don't. Feel is one of those intangibles that can't be taught. But if you do have feel, using a metronome will allow you to play cleaner - and that'll make your 'feel' have more, well, 'feeling.'
When I think of a lot of the players I admire, they could always play their parts without hiding behind distortion and sustain.
I see every new album as an opportunity to start over. To either build or improve upon a direction that has been evolving over time or to completely break new ground.
As a guitar player, you never stop learning, never stop honing your skills.
I'm grateful that as part of the Ernie Ball family, I'm able to connect with my fans in such a meaningful way and hopefully inspire guitar players to up their game!
In the neighborhood that I grew up in - in New York on Long Island - there were a lot of musicians. For some reason, that time in history in our town in New York, everybody played. So it was all around me.
I used to have these reoccurring dreams that I played guitar, which I thought was so bizarre. It all sort of fit together at some point, and I said 'I want to play guitar.'
I wanted to go to Berklee College of Music because that's where Steve Vai went - I was total tunnel vision.
Early on in my career, I was really into the volume pedal techniques that somebody like Steve Howe or Alex Lifeson would use.
You know, as kids were weren't jazz musicians or anything. But, the circle of friends and the neighborhood I lived in, we were really big Rush freaks and Yes fans. We would listen to 'Close to the Edge' and 'Hemispheres' and '2112' - the more artsy, progressive stuff. Some of the guys were into King Crimson and Genesis and all that.
Music doesn't have to sit within the confines of pop structure, you can really make stuff that's more visual.
When I listen to symphonies, or long pieces of music, there are so many different moods and movements, and things that are really beautiful going to something with a lot of tension.