John Petrucci Quotes

You just keep playing. If someone special comes along and organizes it in a new way, then you'll have another approach and everybody will jump on it to try to learn.

What I want to happen is to be really creative, and to play something new in the improvisations, every time.

All I ever wanted to do, personally, was bring something new to what I loved: the thing that I loved the most, the music that I loved the most.

I think it's always important to constantly keep the band on their toes and try new things that you hope will work. That's how 'Apologize' was born, and maybe down the line another little song will be born by that mentality. I've always really liked that song.

I have a curiosity that compels me to find ways to make music that are fresh and new.

Any talk of 'craft' makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it's like the first time. There's no craft in that.

You have got to make new music, that is the way that I look at it anyway.

Many times in music, if you are given limitations, it expands the creativity.

The rule is to try and never play the same thing twice when you have the freedom to do that in the song.

I'm suspicious of the idea of categories in music and this idea of things being in boxes. To me, that seems unnatural. I write the music that somebody with my biography would write, and the thing that's always driven me is an enthusiasm for the material. I sort of follow the notes to where they want to go.

If you're always playing the correct notes, there's something wrong - you're not searching; you're not reaching for anything.

I got my style. I got my own way of playing. I'm a musician. I'm self-taught.

The beautiful thing about working with new instruments is that you sort of approach it with a fresh perspective.

Don't be afraid to play what you feel and what you think no matter what it is. If you play long enough, you start to move past your influences and find your own music.

Songs seem to always spring from improvisation.

Very early on, I started improvising. I was more interested in the music that came out of me than any music I heard.

All of my solos were improvised initially - I would go in and get my bearings and see what I came up with.

You could say that everything the musicians have learned and known over the years, all of their technical resources, are in a dialogue with the things they are discovering every time, as if it was the first time.

When children start to speak they find their own voice by imitating the sounds around them. It would follow that bands do the same. Bands will find their own voice at some point.

A lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they're stuck in that safe place.

The one thing you don't want is that stale sound when you've done a line so much you can't find a fresh approach to it. Drop it.

Maybe the biggest thing that I've learned musically is that anything is possible. Things can work when maybe they don't seem like they can.

I'm always trying to come up with something new and unique. I do a beatbox with a harmonica.

Until you learn to play what you want to hear, you're barking up the wrong tree.

So I learnt a few country western songs, I bought a chord book, and right away I started writing my own stuff, which nobody else did that, I don't know why.