Quotes from John Petrucci

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.

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. But 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.

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.

It's one thing to be recognized by your peers over the course of your career, but the Grammy is something else altogether. You have the Recording Academy, along with a huge cross-section of producers, writers, engineers and musicians from all different musical genres and backgrounds who are making a decision. It's an amazing feeling.

We're a band that really... It's important to us to write music and put it out there and to work together.

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.

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.

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.

I'm such a huge fan of Steve Howe, I worship him.

I often use triadic arpeggio forms within my riffs and solos as a tool to create rich-sounding, poly-chordal sounds.

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.

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

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.'

I've always said that there's a huge progressive rock, progressive metal audience out there, in the world. We see it when we're on tour.

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.

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.

I love playing live, but our tours generally last about a year. I could never do this without the understanding and support of my wife. She's also a guitar player, and we knew each other before Dream Theater started touring.

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.

Rush and guitarist Alex Lifeson are among my biggest influences.

As a guitar player, playing instrumental music is a blast.

We've always had a very strong focus on the instrumentation, and our approach to our individual instruments.

When I was younger, and Iron Maiden and Def Leppard and all that stuff was coming out, I was learning all those songs and trying to play guitar and develop my chops. I was a big fan.

It's much better to play the guitar a half hour a day, every day, than not practice for a week and then jam for five hours one day.

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.