Top 70 John Petrucci Quotes

Words matter. These are the best John Petrucci Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

It's amazing how well real strings blend with metal, li

It’s amazing how well real strings blend with metal, like that whole sound.
John Petrucci
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!
John Petrucci
There’s successes you have in your career. For me, for example, as a guitar player, as somebody in a band putting out albums, the success that we have in our field and how we’re viewed by our fans; that type of success means more than anything to us.
John Petrucci
In my touring rig, there’s a pedal drawer, where I’m able to switch pedals in and out, going into the front of the amp.
John Petrucci
I’ve always employed a melodic style with my leads, placing strong emphasis on infusing romantic sensibilities into what I’m trying to say. Those big, epic melodies come from influences like Pink Floyd, Journey, Marillion… bands that have these guitar parts that are just soaring!
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
Rush and guitarist Alex Lifeson are among my biggest influences.
John Petrucci
One very important side of my playing lies in rhythm; I have a very percussive style. It’s one I’ve developed with Dream Theater over the years, and requires the guitar to be very locked into the rhythm of the drums… way more than what would normally entail.
John Petrucci
Just because something is very technical or heavy doesn’t mean that it’s not melodic.
John Petrucci
I have seen Tommy Emanuel play; my wife and I went to see him and he just melted my face off. How do you play guitar like that? There are so many people that play at a ridiculous level and I sit there watching them and I’m like, ‘Wow, wish I could do that.’
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
Growing up on Long Island, I think Billy Joel albums come with your driver’s license.
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
I do remember one of the first great experiences of going to Europe was playing in Rome hearing the people sing our music so loud. It was louder than the music we were playing.
John Petrucci
We toured with Iron Maiden and we opened and they’d come in later and I didn’t have a lot of time to get to hang out with those guys. Whenever you did, whether it was sitting down at catering or something, you tried to take advantage and just hang out and talk and trade stories.
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
We’re a band that really… It’s important to us to write music and put it out there and to work together.
John Petrucci
One of the main things I look for in a guitarist is in the sound itself. I go for a certain sound, and I think it’s an important thing for making a player more identifiable in the big giant pool of musicians out there. You want a sound that people will recognise just as much as your playing.
John Petrucci
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.’
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
Anytime I can use open strings in a chord, or add a ninth, I will.
John Petrucci
We’ve always had a very strong focus on the instrumentation, and our approach to our individual instruments.
John Petrucci
When we tour in America, the shows are great, and the fans are just as passionate and excited as anywhere else in the world, but in other parts of the world, in parts of South America and in parts of Europe and Asia, the size of the venues and the amount of people we get at concerts is considerably more.
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
Music doesn’t have to sit within the confines of pop structure, you can really make stuff that’s more visual.
John Petrucci
I’m a fan of creative writing and telling stories.
John Petrucci
I’m such a huge fan of Steve Howe, I worship him.
John Petrucci
I don't have very eclectic tastes in music.

I don’t have very eclectic tastes in music.
John Petrucci
As a guitar player, playing instrumental music is a blast.
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
When I think of a lot of the players I admire, they could always play their parts without hiding behind distortion and sustain.
John Petrucci
The cool thing about our fans is that they’re not just passive concert goers.
John Petrucci
Early on in my career, I was really into the volume pedal techniques that somebody like Steve Howe or Alex Lifeson would use.
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
To play sweep arpeggios correctly, you have to mute each note with the left hand immediately after picking it.
John Petrucci
As teenagers, we used to listen to entire Rush albums, entire Pink Floyd albums and shut down the lights and it was great.
John Petrucci
The best way to learn sweep picking is to first isolate the right- and left-hand techniques, master them separately and then coordinate them.
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
For me, it’s always easier playing with a drummer.
John Petrucci
You can go on YouTube now and see young kids with massive technique. There’s literally eight and nine year olds who can play amazingly. There’s no limit to where you can take it.
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
I’ll never forget when I heard Steve Morse and the Dixie Dregs for the first time. I was just blown away, and it changed my whole approach to guitar.
John Petrucci
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.
John Petrucci
Just because you have developed the craft on your instrument doesn’t mean that you don’t have the ability to be expressive emotionally on that instrument, or vice versa.
John Petrucci
Music is great, because you can do that pretty much until you drop.
John Petrucci
I wanted to go to Berklee College of Music because that’s where Steve Vai went – I was total tunnel vision.
John Petrucci
When you watch your favorite guitarists play, notice how little their hands and fingers move sometimes. The economy of motion can’t be overemphasized.
John Petrucci
Rush is one of the common denominators in our band as far as a band that everybody loves and grew up with and was a big influence.
John Petrucci
That’s kind of the nature of being in a progressive band – always trying new things, moving forward.
John Petrucci
The style of music that we’re playing, this progressive metal style, has always been an upstream battle for us. We don’t usually get a lot of commercial exposure.
John Petrucci
As a guitar player, you never stop learning, never stop honing your skills.
John Petrucci
I started to get turned on to a bunch of different bands when I was in middle school/high school. I was turned onto The Who and Black Sabbath and Yes, and stuff like that. But Rush I obsessed over. I wanted to have every album. I wanted to know storylines, read all the lyrics, learn the songs and everything.
John Petrucci