Musicians - John Petrucci

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	Musicians - John Petrucci

John Petrucci (born July 12, 1967) is the guitarist and a founding member of the progressive metal group Dream Theater.

He is a popular musician in the progressive metal genre and utilizes a mixture of styles when playing, such as shredding and flamenco.

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, 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 Massachusetts 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 was also a part of the 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 alternate picking, warmup exercises, sweep picking, chords, legato, and other techniques for developing one's guitar playing.

In 2001 he was chosen 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 G3 tour.

Petrucci also wrote and recorded two instrumental soundtrack songs for a Sega Saturn game titled Necronomicon. Each track is roughly two minutes long and they are simply titled "Prologue" and "Epilogue".

John is happily married to his wife, Rena, and has 3 children, SamiJo, Reny and Kiara.

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 has used the seven-string in songs like "A Change of Seasons", "The Glass Prison", "New Millennium", "Jaws of Life", "Just Let Me Breathe" and "This Dying Soul", and for the albums Awake and Scenes from a Memory. Recently he has favoured six-string extended scale and drop-tuned guitars over his seven-strings.

Petrucci currently endorses Ernie Ball/MusicMan guitars and has two signature guitars on the market, a six- and a seven-string. Two new models are on their way, and will be presented on the NAMM show in January 2006. Petrucci uses a modified DiMarzioAir Norton in the neck position and a DiMarzio D-Sonic in the bridge position. In the past he has used Ibanez guitars, and had his own signature model, manufactured by the company.

Discography

''See also the Dream Theater and Liquid Tension Experiment discographies.

An Evening with John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess (2001)
Suspended Animation (2005)

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Musicians - John Petrucci

Biography

Equipment

Discography

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