John Petrucci

Template:Guitarist infobox John Petrucci (born July 12, 1967) is an American guitarist best known as a founding member of the progressive metal group Dream Theater. He is also the producer (along with his bandmate Mike Portnoy) of all Dream Theater albums since their 1999 release, Scenes From A Memory.

Biography

John first played guitar at age 8 when he noticed his sister (who was taking organ lessons at the time) was allowed to stay up past her bed time to practice. He soon dropped it when his plan failed. At age 12, he began playing again when he was invited into the band of his friend Kevin Moore, who would later become the first keyboardist of Dream Theater. John began to practice in earnest whilst exercising physically. He was a largely self-taught guitarist who developed his skills through attempts to match the skill of his idols, who included Steve Morse, Steve Howe, Steve Vai, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Al Di Meola, Alex Lifeson and Allan Holdsworth. He has jokingly referred to his guitar idols as "the Steves and the Als".

John attended Berklee College of Music in Boston with childhood friend John Myung (bass), where they met future bandmate Mike Portnoy (drums). These three in addition to another childhood friend of Petrucci and Myung, Kevin Moore (Keyboards), formed the band Majesty, which would later become Dream Theater.

While Dream Theater is what John is most commonly associated with, he is also a part of the project band Liquid Tension Experiment and has appeared as a guest on several records by other artists such as the Age of Impact album by the Explorer's Club.

John also came out with a guitar instructional video, "Rock Discipline", which covers warm up exercises, exercises to avoid injury while playing, alternate picking, sweep picking, chords and other techniques for developing one's guitar playing. John has also a book named "Guitar World presents John Petrucci's Wild Stringdom", which was compiled from columns he wrote for Guitar World magazine, bearing that same title.

File:John Petrucci-DerekSherinian-640-1.jpg

John Petrucci with Derek Sherinian (2006)

In 2001 he was invited by Joe Satriani and Steve Vai to tour with them on the popular G3 guitar tour, which exposed him to a massive number of new fans and inspired him to record a solo album. Suspended Animation was released on March 1, 2005, and made available for order from his web site. He also appeared on the 2005 and 2006 G3 tour.

Petrucci also wrote and recorded two instrumental soundtrack songs for a Sega Saturn game titled Digital Pinball: Necronomicon. Each track is roughly two minutes long and they are simply titled "Prologue" and "Epilogue". John is an avid Sega Saturn gamer, and has revealed in interviews that he never tours without one.

Dream Theater bandmate Jordan Rudess revealed in an interview that Petrucci is a practicing Catholic. John is married to Rena, and they have 3 children, SamiJo, Reny and Kiara. Rena Petrucci is also a musician and has been supported by John in concert.

Equipment

John is a devoted user of Mesa Boogie amplifiers. During his career, he has used Mark II's, Mark IV's, Dual Rectifiers, the Formula, Recto, TriAxis and Formula preamps, and 2:90 power amps. He also has a one-off custom preamp called the Nunya. More recently, John has been using the Road King heads for his dirty tones, and the Lonestar for his cleans.

Petrucci is also notable as one of relatively few users of the seven-string guitar. While he uses a conventional six-string guitar in the majority of his compositions, he began to use Ibanez seven-string guitars on three tracks of the 1994 album Awake and on songs like "A Change of Seasons", "The Glass Prison", "The Test That Stumped Them All", "Just Let Me Breathe", "Jaws of Life", "This Dying Soul" and also "The Dance of Eternity" (from the album Metropolis, Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory). Beginning with the album "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence", he started to experiment with lower tunings on his guitars. Much of the track "Blind Faith" from that album was tracked with a detuned Ernie Ball Silhouette six-string bass guitar, simulating a baritone guitar. (Baritone guitars feature a longer scale neck, giving far greater tuning stability at lower tunings than a standard guitar.) Lately, it seems that he has favoured these detuned six-string guitars over his seven-strings. He now has proper Ernie Ball JPM baritones but they are not comercially available as of yet.

Petrucci currently endorses Ernie Ball/MusicMan guitars and has two signature guitars on the market, a six- and a seven-string. Petrucci uses a modified DiMarzio Air Norton in the neck position and a DiMarzio D-Sonic in the bridge position. His signature Musicman guitars also have Piezo acoustic bridges (special saddles hold the strings and pick up the true acoustic vibrations of the strings). This allows John to make his electric guitar sound like an acoustic guitar. He uses this in many of Dream Theater's songs, one of the most obvious examples in the song "Hollow Years". In the past he has endorsed Ibanez guitars, and had his own signature model manufactured by the company (also known as the "JPM" model). In recording John uses whatever guitar he sees fit for any particular situation. His famous black and white Picasso Ibanez seven string guitar was sold to a collector on ebay after his endorsement ended.

Discography

Year	Title	Label	Notes
1989	Guitar Battle	Unknown	Various Artists
1989	When Dream and Day Unite	MCA/Mechanic	First Dream Theater studio album.
1992	Images and Words	Atlantic/ATCO	Again with Dream Theater, introducing the new lead singer James LaBrie.
1993	Live at the Marquee	WEA International	First Dream Theater live album.
1994	Awake	EastWest	The last Dream Theater album with Kevin Moore as Keyboard player.
1995	A Change of Seasons (EP)	EastWest	Dream Theater EP, introducing Derek Sherinian's as new Keyboard Player.
1996	Working Man	Magna Carta	A Rush Tribute.
1997	Falling into Infinity	Elektra	Last Dream Theater album with Derek Sherinian.
1997	Dragon Attack	CNR Music	A Tribute to Queen
1998	Liquid Tension Experiment	Magna Carta	Project with Mike Portnoy, Jordan Rudess and Tony Levin
1998	Once in a LIVEtime	Elektra	2CD recorded in Paris, France.
1998	Age Of Impact	Magna Carta	Explorer's Club
1998	Wicked	Unknown	Jon Finn Group
1999	Liquid Tension Experiment 2	Magna Carta	Second album with Liquid Tension Experiment
1999	Metropolis Pt 2: Scenes from a Memory	Elektra	Jordan Rudess as new keyboard player for Dream Theater, the band's first concept album.
2000	An Evening with John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess	Sound Mind Music	A Live album with Keyboard Player Jordan Rudess
2001	Feeding the Wheel	Magna Carta	Jordan Rudess solo album, Petrucci plays guitar on it.
2001	Live Scenes From New York	Elektra	3CD recorded in New York, USA.
2002	Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence	Elektra	Dream Theater's first studio double album.
2003	Train of Thought	Elektra	Dream Theater heaviest album released to date.
2004	Live at Budokan	Atlantic	Dream Theater 3CD/2DVD combination recorded in Tokyo, Japan.
2005	Suspended Animation	Sound Mind Music	First solo album.
2005	G3: Live in Tokyo	Sony	Plays on G3, with Guitarists Steve Vai and Joe Satriani
2005	Octavarium	Atlantic	Dream Theater most recent Studio Album.
2006	Score	Rhino Entertainment	3CD/2DVD recorded at the Radio City Music Hall on April 1, 2006 New York, USA.
2006	Blood of the Snake - Derek Sherinian	Inside Out Music	Played Guitar on first track "Czar Of Steel".

Videography

Year	Title	Notes
1993	Images and Words: Live in Tokyo
1995	Rock Discipline - VHS
1998	5 Years in a LIVEtime
2001	Metropolis 2000: Scenes From New York
2002	Rock Discipline - DVD
2004	Live at Budokan
2006	Score

See also

• Dream Theater
• G3 (tour)

External links

• John Petrucci official web site
• John Petrucci official forum
• Dream Theater official web site
• Myspace: G3