How To Become A Better Guitarist By Studying John Petrucci’s Playing

How To Become A Better Guitarist By Studying John Petrucci’s Playing

By Tom Hess

One of the biggest mistakes you can make while studying John Petrucci’s guitar style is thinking that there is nothing more to it than fast playing and complex songwriting. Fact is, there is a whole world to be discovered in Petrucci’s playing that will change your perspective on what it means to be an excellent guitarist. By examining his playing style closer than most people do, you will uncover many valuable ideas to help you become a great guitarist.

1. Creative 7 String Guitar Playing

In a 7 string guitar improvement article I wrote, I identified a huge error made by most 7 string guitar players: focusing too much on the lowest string, making their playing boring and repetitive. John Petrucci does not make this same mental error. Instead he uses the expanded range of the instrument much like how a piano player takes advantage of the wide range of the piano. A great pianist will not remain in just one octave range throughout an entire song. He will utilize the entire range of his instrument to give himself the potential to achieve the highest degree of creativity possible.

How Can This Make You A Better Guitarist?

Whether you play lead or rhythm guitar, you must avoid this habit of continually focusing on the extreme higher or lower pitch ranges. If you play 7 string guitar, this is even more important (because this problem is more obvious). Learn how to become a more balanced and creative guitarist using these free resources:

1. Free 7 string guitar riff mini course

2. Article about writing better guitar riffs

2. Impeccable Rhythm Guitar Playing

Although he is of course a superb lead guitarist, Petrucci’s rhythm guitar playing is nothing short of phenomenal. Unfortunately, the majority of guitarists who listen to his playing never pay close attention to his rhythm playing because they don’t think it sounds as challenging as his solos.

The truth is, it is often just as challenging to play and record tight rhythm guitar riffs as it is to play fast shred guitar solos. In fact, there are countless subtle aspects of rhythm guitar playing that most lead guitarists never pay attention to. Petrucci is well aware of these things and in fact has already mastered each and every one. Here is a short list containing some of these things:

• Eliminating all noise that may occur in the silence between separate guitar parts or individual notes
• Using consistent palm muting for ALL chords/notes
• Keeping the intonation of each string 100% perfect (it’s very challenging to do while playing any chord larger than a basic two note power chord)
• Keeping all pinch harmonics ‘in key’ while playing them with vibrato that matches the rhythm in the music
• Getting rid of all the noise that can be created from vibrations in strings that aren’t being played
• Doing everything I just mentioned with flawless timing
• Doing everything I just mentioned several times in a row while recording multiple tracks for a song

Another factor that makes Petrucci such an incredible rhythm guitarist is the fact that his music is written in a way that incorporates highly complex song structures, frequently shifting time signatures and other advanced musical techniques. This makes it a HUGE challenge for most guitar players to play even the most simple of Petrucci’s rhythm guitar parts with much accuracy.

How Can This Make You A Better Guitarist?

The first thing to realize is that rhythm guitar playing is not merely about matching the beat or playing along to a metronome. Once you understand this, do the following:

1. Check out Petrucci’s music with Dream Theater while focusing primarily on his rhythm guitar playing and how it works together with the percussion. This will give you a total understanding of just how good his rhythm playing really is (while changing your view of what it means to be a great rhythm player).

2. Make your rhythm guitar playing more tight by studying this free guide to recording guitar.

3. Ability To Play Highly ‘Melodic’ Solo Phrases

Guitar players who attempt to emulate Petrucci’s soloing style often focus on his ‘speed’ when they should be focusing on his ability to smoothly connect melodies together with excellent phrasing. This is what makes his guitar solos seamlessly transition from one melodic idea to the next with clear ‘beginning’ and ‘ending’ points. By listening to his work with Dream Theater you can hear tons of examples displaying this quality. Here are just a few:

• “The Spirit Carries On” (from “Scenes From A Memory”)
• “Forsaken” (from “Systematic Chaos”)
• “Ministry Of Lost Souls” (from “Systematic Chaos”)
• “Voices” (from “Awake”)
• “The Best Of Times” (from “Black Clouds & Silver Linings”)

As you are listening to each of the solos from the tracks above, you will notice how they all have phrases with obvious beginning and ending points. You will also hear how every solo seems to progress in a very natural manner from start to finish with each phrase building off of the phrase before it. This gives the music a sense of progression that leads you to the next section of the song.

Petrucci’s phrasing approach has a lot in common with the one used by Yngwie Malmsteen. Yes, both players have an overall style that is very different, BUT both use the same approach when it comes to connecting the phrases of their solos together in a smooth, flowing manner. Check out this Yngwie Malmsteen metal guitar article to learn about the nuances unique to his guitar playing.

This soloing approach used by Petrucci is entirely different from the one used by the majority of guitar players. In most cases, guitar players simply play through the notes of the scales they have memorized without trying to build distinct phrases. This causes their guitar solos to sound ‘random’ and does not provide a smooth sense of progression for the listener.

How Can This Make You A Better Guitarist?

Starting right now, don’t think of guitar solos as just your chance to play through whatever scales you know in the right time over the right chords. Instead, think about:

1. Putting together articulate phrases that sound like clear musical statements. Discover how to do this by using the ideas in this article about playing guitar solos.

2. Create a solo based on a specific melodic theme that will be ornamented using different guitar techniques. This will be much less difficult once you can think about soloing similar to how a singer writes his/her vocal melodies. Learn how to use this idea in your soloing by watching this guitar solo video.

4. Ability To Perform Live With Great Consistency

Most fans of John Petrucci overlook the fact that he plays with great consistency during live shows. In addition to playing ‘highly complex’ music, Petrucci is also taking advantage of a highly developed skill set that gives him the ability to play excellent live shows. Fact is, playing live is totally different than playing at home or in the studio. Most musicians who are not used to the pressure of playing in live settings will struggle to perform well even if they are great at recording in the studio (or playing while alone in their room). Playing live presents challenges such as low lighting levels, playing when you can’t hear yourself, playing without much sleep, playing while being tired and covered in sweat plus a wide variety of other issues. It takes a real master guitarist to consistently perform his music as accurately as possible under these circumstances.

How Can This Make You A Better Guitarist?

Know that ‘playing’ and ‘performing’ are two completely separate things and treat them as such when it comes time to practice. To play at the highest level, you must invest a great deal of time into practicing ‘performing’ while trying your best to recreate the challenges of playing in a live setting (like the ones mentioned above). Only then can you become perfectly consistent while playing live on stage.

That said, even if you aren’t interested in touring with a band as a pro musician, it is still highly important that you learn how to perform in live settings so you can be confident while playing in front of others. Read the information in this article to learn how to prevent guitar player stage fright.

5. Knowledge Of MANY Songwriting Methods

In Petrucci’s band Dream Theater, he writes music using a wide variety of different styles. This is made possible by Petrucci’s ability to write not just for guitar, but also for all other instruments used in the band’s songs. Being able to do this (while writing very complex music) requires complete mastery of different songwriting approaches instead of simply writing using the same approach every time.

Although Petrucci is a guitarist, his songs are not written ‘only’ from a guitar player’s perspective. In many cases, his music is written based on the specific playing styles of percussion, keyboards and bass with guitar playing a minor role in the composition as a whole.

On the other hand, most guitarists will write music by simply improvising on guitar until something sounds good and then try to find some makeshift way of connecting their ideas together to produce a complete song. If this is your main approach, your songs will generally sound very similar to the music everyone else writes. Certainly writing in this kind of improvised manner ‘can’ be a useful way to approach songwriting, however, it is very limiting for your creativity when it is your only option.

How Can This Make You A Better Guitarist?

To become a creative songwriter like Petrucci (while also improving in general as a guitarist) you must complete the following steps:

1. Understand how to use a wide collections of songwriting techniques so you always have creative options. Check out this free article series about improving songwriting skills to quickly learn tons of new techniques.

2. Read this instructional column about building musical creativity.

What Should You Do Right Now?

Now that you have become familiar with the things that make Petrucci’s musical skill go above and beyond that of other guitarists, do these three things to maximize the value you get from this knowledge:

1. Listen to the music of Petrucci’s band (Dream Theater) while focusing specifically on the things that have been discussed in this article. Even if this is not your preferred style of music, you will benefit greatly from listening to it with the deeper level of understanding you have now. This will help you to identify and separate the truly magnificent guitarists from the guitarists who are merely ‘good’.

2. Look deeply at your own guitar playing skills and identify what areas in your playing need the most improvement (within the context of the topics in this article). Understand that all the concepts I’ve talked about here are universally applicable to all guitarists. You will become a much better guitarist and musician once you have fully mastered them.

3. Use the resources throughout this article to strengthen the weak areas in your playing.

Once you do these three things on a consistent basis, you will make progress on guitar at an accelerated rate (much faster than any casual Petrucci fan who is unaware of the topics in this article).