John Petrucci solo projects John Petrucci major collaboration projects John Petrucci minor collaboration projects

John in action

John Petrucci

John Petrucci (born July 12, 1967) is a guitar virtuoso best known as a founding member of the progressive metal group Dream Theater.

John first played guitar at age 8 but soon dropped it. At age 12, he began playing again when he was invited into the band of his friend Kevin Moore, who would later become the first keyboardist of Dream Theater. John began to practice in earnest whilst exercising physically. He was a largely self-taught guitarist who developed his skills through attempts to match the skill of his idols, who included Steve Morse, Steve Howe, Steve Vai, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Al Di Meola, Alex Lifeson and Allan Holdsworth. He has jokingly referred to his guitar idols as "the Steves and the Als".

John attended Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts with childhood friend John Myung (bass), where they met future bandmate Mike Portnoy (drums). These three in addition to another childhood friend of Petrucci and Myung, Kevin Moore (Keyboards), formed the band Majesty, which would later become Dream Theater.

While Dream Theater is what John is most commonly associated with, he is also a part of the band Liquid Tension Experiment and has appeared as a guest on several records by other artists such as listed in detail below.

John also came out with a guitar instructional video, "Rock Discipline", which covers warm up exercises, exercises to avoid injury while playing, alternate picking, sweep picking, chords and other techniques for developing one's guitar playing. John has also a book named "Guitar World presents John Petrucci's Wild Stringdom".

In 2001 he was chosen by Joe Satriani and Steve Vai to tour with them on the popular G3 guitar tour, which exposed him to a massive number of new fans and inspired him to record a solo album. Suspended Animation was released on March 1, 2005, and made available for order from his web site. He has appeared on several G3 tours since and features on the Live in Tokyo DVD.

John is happily married to his wife, Rena, and has 3 children, SamiJo, Reny and Kiara.

Discography

In respect of side projects, I have split these into solo work, where the band member has issued work under their own name, major collaborations and minor collaborations. For major collaborations, I would expect that the band member was significantly involved in a substantial part of the work, whereas for minor collaborations, their involvement is only on a single song or is incidental to the work as a whole.