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John Petrucci (born July 12, 1967) is a guitar virtuoso best known as a founding member of the progressive metal group Dream Theater.
He is an extremely popular musician in the progressive metal genre and utilizes a mixture of styles when playing, such as shredding and blues.
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 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 is 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 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".
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 an avid Sega Saturn gamer, and has revealed in interviews that he never tours without one.
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 began to use 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 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.
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 at the NAMM show in January 2006. Petrucci uses a modified DiMarzio Air 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.
See also
External links
1967 births | Living people | American guitarists | Berklee College of Music alumni | Guitarists | Artists who use seven-string guitars | Rock guitarists
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"John Petrucci"