John Petrucci of Dream Theater – Aptitude With Attitude

As three-chord rock runs amok all over the charts, on the radio waves and on television, there is a cry heard far off in the distance: A wailing guitar player is putting just as much emotion into his playing as those who use simplicity as their emotional conduit. This guitarist, though, is not ashamed to play; rather, he is proud of the time he put into developing his considerable technical skills and vocabulary. He loves music and he loves the instrument he plays. And he has his own heroes–among them, Dream Theater’s John Petrucci.

Like those whom he admires (i.e., Steve Morse, Steve Howe and Alex Lifeson), John rages on the guitar, adding textures and parts that create moods, not just chord sequences. He loves intricate melody and is not afraid to flex his considerable technique. John is also a fan of three-chord, non-lead-playing musicians. With Dream Theater’s third album, Awake, he is out to show the world that there is room for good music of all stripes, which is precisely what we talked about one recent afternoon.

Your inspiration as a player and composer is influenced by your education and study of music. Would you recommend that musicians go to school?

Absolutely, so far as to learn the language of music. I think it expands the communication that you can have in any circumstance. As a musician, knowing the language of music helps you adapt to any situation. Plus, learning about music is not a hard job to do. It’s a wonderful experience if you love music. Everybody was into learning music when I grew up. It was never taboo.

Why is it taboo now?

Is it? Once in a while you run across people who say, “Just play from the heart, you Berklee guy.” I never understood why you couldn’t play from the heart and still know how to write, read and transcribe music. I never thought there was a separation between the two.

When you started on guitar did you attempt to learn theory?

No, I started like any other kid; just playing guitar all day in my room, trying to play songs. I took two years of music theory in high school before going to Berklee.

I didn’t want to learn theory because it was always presented in a classical context. I fought it all the way, thinking, “Why can’t we do it with rock music?”

I felt that. I know what you mean. I always thought there should be classes on the more practical things that you might come across playing in a live situation, such as dealing with equipment, how you are in front of an audience; classes on communication between band members and in ensemble playing. I did well in my classes because I put a lot of value into doing well at school. It didn’t matter if it was music class or Spanish, I wanted to get good grades. So I studied. I also played guitar all the time and I was in bands, so I got my fulfillment and enjoyment. Class wasn’t my only musical outlet. Knowing theory helped mostly with songwriting and options, especially when it came to chord progressions and chord voicings. It helped with improvising, giving me a sense of knowing my instrument and options. Theory never helped me with technique—that was always just a mechanical thing. It was kind of like monkey drills.

You were Mr. Metronome.

Totally. I was playing along to the metronome, the click, the clock. I would put on Dio or Ozzy and play along for the entire record. It would always be A minor or E minor. That was a kind of metronomic playing, too. Before I had any sort of schooling knowledge, I would be learning songs by ear or cranking the amp and going sick. Going to school was more studying and applying the studying; writing.

Kim Thayil said the most he practiced was when watching TV and noodling. There is another side to the idea of studying.

There are different levels of people opposed to practicing, just as there are different levels of those musicians who do practice. Some people may know everything about theory yet they lack feel or inspiration in writing. Then there are people who like to practice a lot, know a lot about music, and are also really good songwriters, like Steve Morse. On the other end, there’s somebody like Kim who isn’t into practicing but has a talent for writing music and creating something that people can completely relate to. That’s wonderful, but then there are people who don’t practice and don’t have that ability to reach people. If there’s anything that connects the likes of Steve and Kim, it’s probably the love of music and the ability to tap into what people relate to; because people on both sides may or may not be able to do that with all their knowledge or lack of. You see all extremes.

You would encourage Kim to go to school if he wanted to?

Sure. He might go to school and learn about something that will influence his writing and open him up to other things. If he doesn’t like the format of reading or writing music, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that. It could be a different sort of music school. It could be an appreciation or opening up to an introduction to rhythms and meters or whatever.

What’s your response to people who refer to you as a “guitar geek”?

Every once in a while that comes along, and it’s being judgmental. That can happen with an entire band. That happens with us; I hear “Those Berklee guys, they are so technical.” Hopefully we’re trying to do something that transcends technique.

Sometimes going to school lumps you into a stereotype. People automatically think you will sound the same as every other student.

It all depends on the person and what they do with it. I don’t think you have to wear it on your sleeve that you went to school. If you did the same thing at home with books or with private teachers, you could achieve the same results for a lot less money; it’s not necessarily the school. You can learn that stuff from your magazine. If any one person had a subscription to this magazine and religiously studied everything that was in here from the columns to the songs, they would get a tremendous year’s worth of learning. It’s kind of how you discipline yourself: It’s your ability to know how to learn.

There was a backlash against guitarists who studied the instrument and were able to use the language; the George Lynch/Reb Beach/Steve Vai-type players. There’s been this idea that it’s not cool to be a fine player. Have you ever felt that?

That’s maybe an over-generalization. If anything, I think it was a backlash against neo-classical shredding. I can see why. First of all, the amount of technique is just unbelievable. Where you can lose sight is how you apply that technique to music, to writing; to be able to use your tools. Maybe that’s why alternative or those other styles of music became more popular. Most of the time they had really good songs and cool vocal lines. Not only that, but there is attitude, and almost a community, whereas with the neo-classical shredding it got into a very individualistic, very stale sort of thing. “The new guy is hot so he is the hot new guy.” “This is the hot new lick or technique” as opposed to “Did you hear that song?” or “This band is really cool.” After all, that’s what moves us the most: The Beatles, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd. Bands and music. It’s songs and albums, not licks and guys.

Today you’ll hear people say that the guitar is not important.

To a certain extent it’s not. Sometimes no matter how much practicing I do, nobody really cares. Guitarists have their own community, which is kind of fun. Hopefully, if you achieve a certain level of technique or success you relate to other people in that community and you challenge each other and yourself.

Decades ago the great rock-guitar playing was heard in the Yardbirds. When Tony MacAlpine started, he first heard Allan Holdsworth and thought that was the standard. When the standard is so high I have to ask myself, “What about the rest of us who aren’t going to play that well? Can’t we enjoy making and playing music, too?”

It can be enjoyed on any level. The guitar’s purpose, its attitude, within the band or orchestra is irreplaceable. You can’t get an instrument that does what the guitar does. The anal, nitpicky lick thing is probably not that important in the big picture, but in the little picture—in achieving personal goals and trying to get to the next level—it’s really important. It’s like anything: balancing your checkbook exactly or playing the perfect tennis game; it’s a personal achievement. To that extent it’s very important.

Why do you play fast?

One reason is it’s really fun to be able to do that. When you hear a song’s tempo and you’re groovin’ along, to be able to rip something out is a lot of fun . It’s why people drive a fast car. You get exhilarated from it. There’s a certain amount of gratification if you pull it off and it’s technically the way you want it to sound. The other reason is to be able to have a vocabulary that expands from one end to the other. So if I’m hearing something that needs to be pushed over the edge, I want to have the arsenal to be able to do it. Sometimes I’ll hear guys play so good, so tasty, and the band is cooking along and they are as high as they can go and as intense as they can get; in Dream Theater that’s when I’ll just push it over the edge and start ripping. Let’s say you heard a guy play with the tastefulness and feel of Gilmour and at the height of his solo he was able to rip like Holdsworth or Morse or Vai. He’s taking the listener there. He knows how to use it. It’s very rare that you see that combination. Morse has that combination, and Vai has the ability to do that. He’ll take you by starting so weird and slow, and by the end it’s mind-boggling.

Are you as disciplined a player as you were in your Berklee days?

Actually, I feel like I’m getting more disciplined in other areas. I’m learning how to adjust my discipline for a purpose. You have to adapt your whole schedule for touring and recording professionally. I’ve learned that when I’m recording I have to discipline myself to concentrate on what I’m doing: the solos that I want to develop, the parts, getting them tight, jelling with them; not necessarily all the millions of exercises that everyone has done. So your discipline becomes almost specialized. It’s part of becoming more professional. I’m also starting to become more disciplined mentally. For me that needs the most development as opposed to the physical side. That means overcoming any of the interference or criticisms that might happen as you’re playing in more high-stress situations; you either handle them or you don’t. If our success as a band continues it will probably get worse; being on TV, live appearances, live radio broadcasts. You have to keep your composure and let what’s supposed to come out come out; let all those hours and years of practicing come out without mental malarkey stopping it. So it’s more mental discipline I’m working on. The physical discipline will always be there for me. I was never one of those guys who couldn’t practice. I always have to maintain my chops. That’s always there. Certain things you can do anytime and certain things you’ve got to work for. Maybe overcoming that is part of the mental toughness: You know you can do it, you’ve done it a million times.

There’s also a thrill in exploring something for the first time.

I’m excited about this record because the way we recorded the guitar this time was different than we’ve ever done it in the past. This is how I always wanted to record. It’s a more refined way of how I would do it live. On the last album [Images and Words] we had one heavy sound and one clean sound and one lead sound. On this there’s at least a dozen different types of guitar sounds, so it has tons more personality. I had the equipment picked out before I went in. I was way more prepared this time. Every once in a while it wouldn’t work and we would try something different. While we rehearsed and wrote this album I was being analytical about sound, trying to pinpoint what I like and why I liked it. We got that nailed like we never had before because Steve Blucher from DiMarzio was nice enough to come to our New York rehearsals. He changed the pickups for me and listened and got sounds. My custom guitars are a result of my being in a rehearsal place for more than a day. It was three months of rethinking. Then when we were getting guitar sounds the engineer encouraged bringing in CDs we liked the sound of. I brought in Metallica for some of the heavier stuff. I brought in Rush’s Hold Your Fire for some of those semi-clean distorted sounds. The [totally] clean sounds I had tailored before going in. I had an idea of how to do it from the “Pull Me Under” clean sound. I think it’s the custom pickup combination and selection. It’s two humbuckers and a three-way switch in the middle position, so it’s the two hum-canceling middle coils. It’s a super clean, scooped sound; very quiet. Steve calls the bridge pickup the SFP, which is “Steve’s Favorite Pickup.” The one in the neck is a Norton Lite. All the companies involved were really helpful.

Did you use several different Ibanez guitars?

I used all Ibanez guitars. I had some different ideas once I started experimenting with pickups, and Blucher influenced how I wanted the guitars to be changed. The ones I had already we changed by direct-mounting the pickups and changing the switch. To get the type of pickup selection I like, you need a special toggle switch with six ports. I sent those guitars out to the L.A. studio where we were recording, and Mace Bailey from the Ibanez custom shop direct-mounted the pickups, changed that switch, and re-fretted the guitars. The body shape on my custom guitars is a standard Ibanez RG type. Since then [Ibanez and I have] begun a custom guitar, starting from scratch. I tried different woods and I ended up sticking with bass wood. For a couple of songs I wanted a cleaner, Strat-y, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Texas-like sound. Ibanez lent me two of their Talman guitars. I put on heavier-gauge strings. I have these Danelectro-copy lipstick pickups—I’m not a vintage guy so I don’t know the difference. It sounded really good. On the amplifier end I was doing the same thing. Mesa/Boogie was sending me different amplifiers and tubes to try out combinations. Those guys were incredibly helpful as well. Sean Beresford actually duplicated my rig out in L.A. so I wouldn’t have to ship it, plus he supplied me with a whole bunch of new heads that he had been working on. The main head I used was borrowed from my guitar tech, Mark Snyder. It’s a Mark IIC+ and it’s amazing. Boogie supplied a TriAxis, my live amp, which I used a lot. I used a Rectifier head and their blues amp, the Blue Angel. For speakers I used two 4x12 Rectifier cabinets with vintage 30’s.

How did you mic the cabs?

I was really impressed by Duane Baron, who is more the engineer part of the production team with John Purdell. For most of the sounds we used one cabinet with three mics on it. One was a Shure SM57 directly in the middle cone of one speaker. One was a skinny microphone on another speaker, and on that same speaker he had another 57 that was off to the side. This technique, which he has been doing for years, is designed to have control over the different frequencies that the speakers have to offer; he can EQ and blend the highs, mids and lows. He put each mic on a different fader, got the highs where he wanted them, got the mids and lows dialed up, and put them all together. It’s so cool because you have total control of what’s coming out of the speaker. That’s how we did most of the heavy rhythm guitar tracks. I might’ve doubled or quadrupled it, which was kind of tedious. For some sounds in “Voices” and “Lifting Shadows” we used a stereo setup where he would mic two cabinets the exact same way and I had effects in my rig working, like digital delay, slapback or chorusing. I never recorded effects to tape before. Sometimes with certain effects, the way they interact with the signal and the way it comes out of the speakers sounds totally different than if you were to record it clean and add the effects through the board. At times it doesn’t sound like guitar.

What was your acoustic guitar setup?

I used a Martin acoustic, sometimes with the Nashville tuning. Steve Bleucher gave me that idea as well. He explained it to me and it sounds great. [Nashville tuning involves raising the lower four strings one octave (with lighter gauges), leaving the B and E in standard–ed.] I also used an E-Bow on Kevin’s [Moore, DT’s longtime keyboardist who left the group recently] song “Space-Dye Vest.” The song is very dark and kind of Floydish. He has been listening to alternative and dark stuff like Smashing Pumpkins, where the guitar tones aren’t conventional. Some of Billy Corgan’s guitar tones are very overdrivcn and dark with no high end. It’s creamy sounding. Kevin was trying to translate this to me, so I tried to go for those sounds. I put the guitar into the TriAxis and the TriAxis into the front of the Rectifier, so I was using the TriAxis almost as a distortion pedal, using the whole preamp. It was this ridiculous amount of distortion. I turned down the tone on my guitar and triple-tracked it. It sounds like this wall of cream guitar that you can dive into. With that sound I play a single-line melody on one string using the E-Bow.

Did you do anything else new with guitars?

I used a seven-string Ibanez Universe on a few songs. John Myung plays a six-string bass and he is always playing lines that are way down there. I said to myself, “It would be so cool if we could double some really low lines.” So I’m doubling a lot of low lines and it sounds really heavy. The original Universe was uncomfortable for me to play. Mace took a body and made it feel like one of my normal guitars.

Do you see all these different sounds as pieces of a puzzle you fill in, or do you explore and go, “This is cool, I’ve got something I like, what’s next?”

I map them out. It’s like orchestrating the guitar parts. The way I approach everything, whether it’s solos or parts, is to take the songs and break them down and write which guitars have to go where. Before I came in to record I had a full list of which solos I had to do with which guitars. I knew the sections and where they were. If I play a part with a semi-distorted tone, when I record I divide it up into two parts and play the clean part; maybe the upper part on an acoustic and the lower part with heavy chords. I orchestrate it that way. The song ideas themselves come when we’re playing. They are further developed alone, [each] on our own, and then when we get back together sometimes it’s weird, but most of the time it’s actually enlightening because the song is usually better. My ideas get interwoven with their ideas and that changes them.

There is a relaxed feeling on Awake, which is hard to get with so much precision playing. When you play something technical you either hold your breath or exhale. This feels more like an exhale.

Maybe that’s from having more experience. Besides the obvious answer that I just gave, it’s probably in the way in which it was recorded. The last time, the producer was triggering the drums, having me use this guitar, use that amp, he didn’t like a bass part.... It was mixed without us. This time around I had all the sounds sussed out. Everything sounded good and all we had to do was record it. The performances were captured and not stifled. The producers were cool in getting the performance out. There were some parts that were difficult for me to play; instead of feeling pressured, I felt very relaxed, almost like being coached.

Do you comp solos, take whole passes or punch in?

Last album we comped. This time we punched in. I recorded all the other guitars on the analog machine and the solos on the digital. I did one full day of solos and a couple of days that were a few hours at a time.

What of yours would you have someone play for your guitar peers?

“Erotomania” is chock-full of guitar playing and also a lot of different styles. There’s thematic playing, some fast playing and the orchestration of guitars. Almost all the types of guitars I use are on that song.

You are burning in “Caught.” It sounds like you had road chops when you recorded. You sound smoother.

Cool. It was a lot easier to play the solos this time. I felt like I had developed some sense of smoothness. I don’t know why. We recorded, and I left after my basic tracks. For two and a half weeks I just practiced the solos with the 4-track. Maybe when I came back there was a confidence thing because we had such a good guitar tone. Maybe it was the way the producers worked. There was no tension. One of the key things to sounding fluid and smooth is technique. Obviously, it’s about strength and being articulate. For me it’s not always right there. It’s not something I can rush. It’s something I have to be prepared for and work for.