John Petrucci Quotes

Whenever I start to really think about what I'm playing, I may play it better musically, but the feeling isn't there.

It's amazing that you can listen to any song and you can always tell when there's some substance beneath it and when there isn't. Even if it's poetically written and technically brilliant, I'd rather hear something that's all over the place but has some soul to it.

I go for as much feeling as I can rather than show what I can do up and down the neck. I don't play to show people ability.

The art of interpretation is not to play what is written.

Music expresses what cannot be put into words I like to think, and I think the band makes a good go at it.

As a singer, you have to bring the soul to the song.

Reading music is good for training, getting things done in a hurry. It doesn't teach you nothing about feeling.

Of course we all know when music's too much in the head, and we define our greatest players by the way they are able to communicate directly from their emotional selves.

The right notes mean more than 1,000 mph arpeggios.

I play very, very emotional. That's just my style.

It seems to me that most people are impressed with just three things: how fast you can play, how high you can play, and how loud you can play.

I don't play accurately--any one can play accurately--but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life.

There's no performance where I never have to think about setting up a phrase or making a technical adjustment while I'm performing.

What comprises good performance? The ability through singing or playing to make the ear conscious of the true content and affect of a composition.

I have often heard the statement made by foreign singers, as a demonstrated fact, that the German artists are artists in feeling indeed, and serious in their devotion, but that their singing is crude.

Obviously, a bass sounds like a bass and a guitar sounds like a guitar, but the way you play the guitar reflects your personality.

The way to do it is to put as much life into the song as I can. You can either get it to breathe or you can't.

The quality of the writing, really. Simple as that. Beautiful words. It's very nice as a singer to do great songs, which have wonderful lyrics and strong feelings underneath the song.

With few exceptions, music has been for some centuries the art which has devoted itself not to the reproduction of natural phenomena, but rather to the expression of the artist's soul, in musical sound.

No one has any respect for someone who can play a million notes per minute but can't put together a decent tune that someone can sing to or feel some sort of emotion from.

Music has nothing to do with your technical ability.

Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second.

When a pianist sits down and does a virtuoso performance he is in a technical sense transmitting more information to a machine than any other human activity involving machinery allows.

Good taste - that's all you really need when you're playing an instrument.

Mozart would play a counterpart with his left hand while using his right to mock it. It was blue, dark, shadowy - and it made me feel something. That's when I realized music was inside me.