Metal Mania Community

John first played guitar at age 8 when he noticed his sister (who was taking organ lessons at the time) was allowed to stay up past her bed time to practice. He soon dropped it when his plan failed. 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, Dave Murray, Allan Holdsworth. He has jokingly referred to his guitar idols as "the Steves and the Als".

John attended Berklee College of Music in Boston 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 project band Liquid Tension Experiment and has appeared as a guest on several records by other artists such as the Age of Impact album by the Explorer's Club.

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", which was compiled from columns he wrote for Guitar World magazine, bearing that same title.

Petrucci also wrote and recorded two instrumental soundtrack songs for a Sega Saturn game titled Digital Pinball: Necronomicon. Each track is roughly two minutes long and they are simply titled "Prologue" and "Epilogue". John is an avid Sega Saturn gamer, and has revealed in interviews that he never tours without one.

Dream Theater bandmate Jordan Rudess revealed in an interview that Petrucci is a practicing Catholic. John is married to Rena, and they have 3 children, SamiJo, Reny and Kiara. Rena Petrucci is also a musician and has been supported by John in concert.

John is a devoted user of Mesa Boogie amplifiers. During his career, he has used Mark II's, Mark IV's, Dual Rectifiers, the Formula, Recto, TriAxis and Formula preamps, and 2:90 power amps. He also has a one-off custom preamp called the Nunya. More recently, John has been using the Road King heads for his dirty tones, and the Lonestar for his cleans.

Petrucci is also notable as one of the musicians to popularize the usage of the seven string guitar (Alongside Steve Vai and the nu metal band Korn). While he uses a conventional six-string guitar in the majority of his compositions, he began to use Ibanez seven-string guitars on three tracks of the 1994 album Awake and on songs like "A Change of Seasons", "The Glass Prison", "The Test That Stumped Them All", "Just Let Me Breathe", "Jaws of Life", "This Dying Soul" and "The Dance of Eternity". Beginning with the album "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence", he started to experiment with lower tunings on his guitars. Much of the track "Blind Faith" from that album was tracked with a detuned Ernie Ball Silhouette six-string bass guitar, simulating a baritone guitar. (Baritone guitars feature a longer scale neck, giving far greater tuning stability at lower tunings than a standard guitar.) Lately, it seems that he has favoured these detuned six-string guitars over his seven-strings. He now has proper Ernie Ball JPM baritones but they are not comercially available as of yet.

Petrucci currently endorses Ernie Ball/MusicMan guitars and has two signature guitars on the market, a six- and a seven-string. Petrucci uses a modified DiMarzio Air Norton in the neck position and a DiMarzio D-Sonic in the bridge position. His signature Musicman guitars also have Piezo acoustic bridges (special saddles hold the strings and pick up the true acoustic vibrations of the strings). This allows John to make his electric guitar sound like an acoustic guitar. He uses this in many of Dream Theater's songs, one of the most obvious examples in the song "Hollow Years". In the past he has endorsed Ibanez guitars, and had his own signature model manufactured by the company (also known as the "JPM" model). In recording John uses whatever guitar he sees fit for any particular situation. His famous black and white Picasso Ibanez seven string guitar was sold to a collector on ebay after his endorsement ended.

In the Majesty/Early Dream Theater era, Petrucci can be seen using a B.C. Rich Assassin (strat-style guitar) through Randall Amplifiers.