John Petrucci quotes:

If you can't play as good or as fast as me, just give up, sell your guitar on eBay and kill yourself.

Obviously [Black] Sabbath is definitely a huge name and of course deserving with Ozzy coming back.

I have a lot of guitars. Yeah, I'm not like a guitar collector, I don't have all vintage instruments. I don't even own a Strat or Les Paul. I don't have one.

With all tools at my disposal, I'm 100% into chasing tone and checking out new equipment and "geeking" out during sound check by taking too much time.

Music is a communication. It's a two-way street. You need people to play to in order to make that connection complete. That's the way we look at it.

You try to play the song better than you had before.

I remember feeling for the first time going somewhere where I was part of a community where I didn't feel like an outcast. I felt like I belonged. Everyone had a guitar strapped to their back.

Dark master of sin, now my soul is yours.

Personality wise, we are all kindred spirits. I've said this before; if we [with Mike Mangini ] ever went to high school together we would have been friends. He is just one of us! We felt that immediate connect.

When I think of a lot of the players I admire, they could always play their parts without hiding behind distortion and sustain. Put the time in. Hear your mistakes. Yeah, it sucks, it's humbling, it makes you want to throw the guitar out the window. But if you work on your mistakes, they'll eventually go away, and you'll become a strong player.

Obviously the best way to retain the most profit is to not give any of it away. That's something that you certainly learn through the years.

Real thick strings - your hands start to get fatigued. As much as you practice, and as much experience as you have, and as long as you've been playing, there is a fatigue point during the show, as with anything that's physical. So I wanted to basically pace myself better.

I don't have very eclectic tastes in music.

I really rely a lot more on memory. I'm definitely not as good of a sight reader.

Stay focused when you're playing alive, so you're not distracted by something going on.

I do a lot of the stuff that I started out doing that I think any guitar player that's concerned about the craft needs to do. It's basic practicing of the basic elements. I try to practice like a well rounded regiment of things where I can kind of do whatever I wanna do and I also have to practice the actual songs to keep that under my fingers as well.

I would say the more the better when it is comes to development and marketing. It's actually fun. For some it can be a frustrating thing.

We're always in that head space about the audience and less about us at that moment.

The Majesty guitar symbolizes the very reason why I am so proud to be a Music Man artist. I had the idea for this guitar a couple of years ago but it is because of their innovative spirit and dedication to the art of guitar building that it is now a reality. I am so grateful that I am able to collaborate with the best guitar company on the planet and so incredibly proud that together we have created what is to me, the perfect musical instrument for guitar players. I really hope you get a chance to play one and am confident that you will feel the same!

When we came out, the kind of music that was popular was Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains, all that stuff. That was when we released our second album, 'Images And Words', and it was something people werent used to hearing maybe, and it sort of rose above all that somehow, being progressive, or whatever.

I experimented a bunch with Ernie Ball in getting the strings to not flop around too much, but at the same time not to be too thick to where you're playing telephone cables.

If someone is feeling out of sorts or detached it's a great time to bring them in and restate why we are here and what we are trying to do.

If you bring somebody into the band you are going to be with them a lot whether it's in the studio, on the tour bus, or at dinner every night; you want somebody you enjoy being around. You don't want an annoying guy .

I wanted something different. I'd been using the C+ amps for a long time, and I love them - they're one of my favorite amps ever. But on this album [Road Kings] I wanted - there were a couple reasons, actually. One is that I wanted a more aggressive sound, some more teeth and hair.

Even with Dream Theater, we track in a big studio and everything. But when it comes to doing leads, I don't really require a lot of studio to do that. I need a good sounding room and a Pro Tools rig, and some Neve mic-pres, and I'm good.

It's a balance between getting the right string gauge that's thick enough where it sound good, and not rubber bands - but not too thick where your hands start to get real tired.

Many times we talk about the people that have come to enjoy the show. They went through a lot to get here, whatever they needed to work out in their lives; they got babysitters, they traveled, and purchased the tickets. So it's up to us to deliver the goods!

I'm realizing this more and more that it's one thing to get involved with your own political beliefs and stand behind you believe in personally.

I wanna go in the studio and just go back to the same amps and stuff I'm so comfortable with the sound of. Which I think is important to stay original.

I went straight out of high school, and when I was 17, all I wanted to do was play guitar.

In Japan they're definitely more over the top. They had four Boogie stacks and 20 guitars. But otherwise it's pretty much the same thing, except there's a translator. It's really nice.

The only thing I had in my mind [when I was 17 ] was that I was going to be a professional musician. So it was just the right environment.

If I'm not in an environment where I can record, it's great to be able to write something down, to be able to know how to do that, to be able to write notation. You grab a piece of paper and there it is. It's the cheapest recording equipment you can buy: a piece of manuscript paper and a pencil!

To be in Boston, which is a great city and which is full of many colleges and young kids, and to be around that many people that were at the same point in their lives, who played guitar or whatever instrument - it was just perfect. It was a great environment.

Jordan [Ruddes], he learned that way, and that's what he knows how to do. That's how he kind of approaches all music, whether it's to learn a cover song that we're going to play, or to review Dream Theater music - he always uses charts. That's what he knows. I really rely a lot more on memory.

I'm a member of the Recording Academy and I see the way it works and even with the whole voting process it's broken down into specific categories. There are Pop categories and Dance and Rock and Metal and Film and Score and everything else. Basically when you are voting you are urged not to vote in the category that you don't know anything about.

With the Road King amp, you're able to switch power tubes and speakers and do all these different things. And I didn't want to have five different heads in my rack. And there's something about, when you do the type of setup that I have, unless you have a dedicated amp to a dedicated speaker and you're actually switching, you have to use the same power section of the main head that you're using.

Since I'm in a band, and I'm not usually in situations where I need to read, it doesn't come up as often, and I don't rely on it as much.

The C+ amps is vintage at this point, and it definitely has a certain sound to it. I wanted something that was going to keep Dream Theater in more of a current musical landscape, as far as being the producer and producing the type of album I wanted to hear.

Going to the Grammys, being nominated for a Grammy, that was a really big deal for me, for us as a band.

You might pick up some influences from another type of music that you wouldn't normally think of, but, you know, maybe as a guitar player, it will come out in your improvisational style, maybe as a song writer it might come out in your note choices, or in your melodic choices, and it just helps to making your music that much more original and unique.

The good thing about playing this style that we play, you know, the progressive element of it, is that we can add in different elements of different styles. And that creates a more interesting overall sound.

A lot of people around the world were, like, very frustrated, you know "Why don't you just release the name? Why is it taking so long?" But the cool thing is that it brought people together, like you said, it brought our fans into the experience, it sort of exposed us, exposed the process, and I think it welcomed Mike Magini, because people saw what happened to get to that point.

I have to say that our fans have been absolutely wonderful all across the world.

I think it's a good way to sort of build your career and even when I was a young kid, I did the same thing, I looked at these guitar players, like ...I was a big fan of Steve Vai, and Al DiMeola, and said "What do those guys do?" and I found out that they went to Berkelee College of music, so I was like "Well, I'm going to go to Berkelee College of Music", and you try to, like, learn from those things, so... It's important.

I started playing guitar when I was 12, and I started getting into more metal, like Maiden and Metallica... Of course, as I kind of got better and better in the guitar, I was listening to more guitar players, so then I got into, I guess, more of the prog side.

When I first started, it was the real basic stuff that was being played on the radio, so I was into Zeppelin, and Sabbath, and AC/DC, and all stuff like that. I grew up in New York, on Long Island, so the local radio stations played all that kind of thing.

Jordan Ruddes does [have a home studio], but it's all self-contained. I'll be the only guy with a fully built recording studio. So they'll have to come to me.

My main objective with a home studio - I could get into doing full band demos - but my first objective is to cut things like guitar tracks and solos at home.

Many kids and parents ask me, 'What kind of guitar can I buy?' It's a great opportunity for those people to be able to buy a quality guitar that's not necessarily a little Fender or whatever. Ernie Ball signature model guitar is something that's more signature.

Instead of buying a guitar for $2,000 or $2,500 - I'm not sure how much these are going for - but it's maybe $300 or something like that. It's more for beginners and stuff like that. Obviously it's not hitting the pros. And you can't get the Piezo pickup and the color-changing paint and the inlays and all the fancy things that my signature guitars offer, but you can get the general feel of the guitar - and the body style. It's cool.

You might be able to get a certain sound, and in the studio you certainly look at things under a microscope a lot more. You might hear more warmth out of a thicker string gauge. But in the practical world, like with us, we're playing An Evening With... so it's three hours of music, and our music is pretty challenging as far as the technical aspect. And I found after awhile that I was killing myself.

I'm from the school of putting a lot of hours of practice into playing. But at the same time you have to write original music - that's really important, because that's the things that's going to separate you from everybody else, that's going to give you your unique voice as a music that you create.

Guitar players get inward and analytical about their playing but when you start to get positive feedback from other players it makes you think that it is coming together.

It's hard to answer that from my own perspective because when I'm playing I know where it is coming from and the sources.

We used to rehearse and that's where the roots of Dream Theater formed. Y'know, we used to play cover songs and jam to [Iron] Maiden and stuff but we were writing songs and it was this metal, loud style and we'd constantly get knocks on our door, because the rehearsal rooms were right next door to each other, and these jazz guys would be like, "Can you guys turn it down a little?"

First and foremost, with everybody we wanted to see if they can pull off the songs, play them correctly, and that they it felt right musically. That's something Mike [Mangini] did, it felt like the band. He really gets the style and delivers in a powerful metal way.

We auditioned a lot of great drummers; every one of them was world class. We had a lot of fun playing with each of them and had some great jams. With Mike [Mangini] it was just something really special about what was going on.

You're about to walk on stage and play together for the next few hours so you want to feel connected and make sure that everyone is in the same head space; a good head space.

Songs like "Spirit Carries On" really gets the audience moved and on the same page. It's challenging and all so much fun to play.

We've seen progressive rock all over the world, in South America, Europe, Asia, across the US and North America and Australia. There's huge audiences for this stuff. For me it's always been there and it's just a matter of time before the people have more of the means to spread the word.

Songs come alive every night and can be a new experience for someone. You might have someone in the audience who has never seen us before and hearing it for the first time. We are aware of that.

It's probably no coincidence with the internet and social media and the word being able to spread beyond the radio, where fans can go and talk and congregate and trade stories and a band could communicate news very quickly and in a worldwide basis. I'm sure that's helped in bringing in this case us to more of the forefront of peoples attention.

As far as bands doing that in a way where they think they're going to fight the government, the only people they're really hurting is the fans.

Now that we're established and we have a history we know that we can expect people to show up and to have a good time.

When we first started and started hitting new places for the first time, you kinda didn't know, because we were new. Sometimes we played tiny little clubs and sometimes we'd play a larger place.

There's different levels of where we do well throughout Europe. Fortunately, for us, it's pretty great all throughout it.

I've always said that there's a huge progressive rock, progressive metal audience out there, in the world.

I'm a hopeless tone chaser!I love it and get into the whole thing.

I've been fortunate to work with companies that I endorse because I love their gear. Whether Music Man, Dunlop, or DiMarizo to me these companies have supported me in such a way that's invaluable.

We're not the kind of band who writes an order abundance of songs and picks from them, we usually write for the album.

I know we play a part in the story of progressive music, but for us those influences are the real fathers, the ones that we were interested in.

I think I'm a father, but a father of three kids! :)

We have a storage close by where I live, that's very organised. My guitar tech, Matty organised it all, labeled everything.

When we make those guitars we make tons of prototypes, I have all those. And once a guitar has come out there's all different versions and colours and woods and I have all those. There's hundreds of them.

Almost 15 with music, we have so many guitars that we developed over the years. The latest one is 'The Majesty' guitar, which I'm really proud of.

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.

Out of Berklee Dream Theater was born and we've been together ever since. I didn't have to taste that feeling of defeat.

I somehow always found the right people on my own to jam with as well as playing with all my buddies. I didn't get to a point where I was auditioning for any bands.

I didn't try out for bands when I was younger. I got into guitars intensely a couple of years into playing so much by the time I was graduating high school I was accepted into Berklee College of Music.

There were some initial instruments I had when I was young and made some trade-offs. Maybe a guitar I bought in a flea market. They weren't the greatest guitar but they would be cool to still have them. Other than that, not as a professional.

I often think about my Music Man guitars being 100 million percent tailored to my needs as a player and how lucky I am.

I almost rely on other people to say, "Hey, you ever hear of this band?" And I'll say, "Oh, I've never heard of that!" And I listened to them and thought, "What the hell?"