The Clinic

So I got to attend the two hour clinic that Petrucci held before the show. As John walked right by me to take the “stage” I immediately noticed that he’s built! He looks like he benches 300 lbs. In a rock world of drug-’n-alcohol-emaciated skank-males with wispy gangly limbs this is a welcome departure. John actually made several gym references and workout analogies during the clinic.

The next thing I noticed was that he really knew his music theory… (what did I expect?!) …which is what happens when you come out of Berklee and not your cousin’s garage. And he also spoke with authority, yet with a relaxed down-to-earth tone… like a police officer speaking at a school. It was great, and completely unexpected.

Needless to say the small performance illustrations he did during the clinic blew everyone away. This guy is insanely good. He is easily one of the top, top rock guitarists in the world. He covered a lot of ground in a short time, but here are some of them:

• Inversions – 1 note per string, 2 notes-per-string (with alternating finger assignments)
• Practicing – EVERY day… even if only for short periods, and getting in the habit of practicing through whole songs or sequences (as if playing live)
• Strength Exercises – 4 sets of 10 repetitions of tight, fast licks (just like working out)
• Endurance Exercises – Performing fretboard exercises like doing wind sprints (SPRINT JOG SPRINT JOG)
• Skill Exercises – Pure repetition of difficult phrases… over and over and over on top of one another
• Polish Exercises – Custom made repetition exercises to fine tune difficult phrases, hard to hit notes, and hard to form chord changes
• Sweep Picking – 2, 3, and 4-note sweeping (the right-hand tempo and consistency is the key)

And before I forget, Patty Womer needs to know that during the clinic he used the verb, “noodle”.

The Concert

This was my first concert at Albany’s Washington Avenue Armory… a cute little basketball arena that serves the purpose, I guess. We showed up in time to catch the last half of the third (and final) opening band (Opeth, who growled and gurgled a lot).

Once Dream Theater took the stage the place was electric. Despite the muddy sound mix (the low end really muddied both the vocals and the more treble-y moments) the band sounded other-worldly, each performing his craft to mind-numbing levels of accuracy and precision. At several points Petrucci has me just shaking my head… there was nothing else I could do but watch his effortless sweeps and runs (legato and alt-picked) up and down the neck. *sigh*

Here’s the setlist, compliments of Krazy Ken:

1. Constant Motion
2. Panic Attack
3. Strange Deja-Vu
4. Through My Words
5. Fatal Tragedy
6. Surrounded (extended)
7. The Dark Eternal Night
8. Take The Time
------------------------------------
9. Shmedley Wilcox:
      I.Trial Of Tears
      II. Finally Free
      III. Learning To Live
      IV. In The Name Of God
      V. Octavarium (Razor's Edge)

It was a great show. This was my first time seeing them. My only real complaint? They didn’t play Pull Me Under!? Holy smokes… how can you go to a Dream Theater show and not hear Pull Me Under? Oh well… just another reason to see them again.

The clinic will be at Trick Shot Billiards [map] – right behind Parkway Music – on Sunday, May 18, from 3-5pm. Tickets are $5 at the door and space is limited so plan accordingly. Dream Theater’s concert starts at 7pm that same night at the Armory.

Today the term guitar solo is commonly taken to refer specifically to the idiom of rock music. Although solo passages for guitar are found in many musical genres, the ‘guitar solo’ has an almost iconic place in rock, and particularly in the subgenres called hard rock or heavy metal.

Although in principle any kind of guitar can be used in a rock guitar solo, and counter-examples abound, the characteristic solo sound is created using an electric guitar with the timbral effect known as distortion…

- Guitar solo, Wikipedia.org

All music undergoes various movements and shifts of energy and rhythm. There needs to be highs and lows, louds and softs for the piece to be able to accentuate the finer qualities of tonal and vocal communication.

The guitar solo helps the development of most rock and harder pop pieces by serving as a break from the main lyrical content and often offering opportunity to incorporate a new chord progression or rhythm breakdown. The guitar solo is like the month of March… it can come in like a lamb and go out like a lion, or vice versa, or be all lamb or all lion.

Probably most important, a good guitar solo will emote a significant and tangible message to a song. Great solos are extensions of the lyrical and musical intent of the song itself and are tailored to fit the overall composition. A given solo would not have the same effect if lifted out of one song and placed into another.

Here are just a very few of my favorite guitar solos that I think are nearly perfect examples of form, expression, and song fit. Keep in mind that this is just a tiny smattering of the list I could generate and that these are not necessarily my favorite songs… this is a list for the solos (guitarist — song — artists/group — album):

• Zakk Wylde — No More Tears — Ozzy Osbourne — No More Tears
• Marco Sfogli — Pretender — James LaBrie — Elements of Persuasion
• John Petrucci — Pull Me Under — Dream Theater — Images & Words
• Chris DeGarmo — Silent Lucidity — Queensryche — Empire
• Phil Collen — White Lightning — Def Leppard — Euphoria

Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all.   -Oscar Wilde

I was in NYC recently and visited the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). They had some featured paintings by Jackson Pollock. Now it was cool to actually see this man’s work, and I’m not saying his stuff doesn’t have artistic merit… (I know I’m going to get flamed for this)… but I don’t really get it. Abstract impressionism is not art to me… especially when it’s just paint thrown, dripped, tossed, flung, dropped onto the canvas. And then I read about people who have dished out big bucks for paintings done by a chimp named Congo? (story link) They call his paintings abstract, too. Isn’t that funny? Just two abstract guys monkeying around drooping paint on the canvas. Maybe the monkey threw paint in lieu of poo?

The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.   -Thomas Wolfe

However, the most illustrative material at the MoMA were the paintings that were just one solid color! I wish I were kidding. There were at least four of these… and yes, one of them was completely white and another was completely black. Now, all in all I loved visiting the MoMA… so let me toss in here some pics of works that I really liked… work I found to have greater than subjective artistic merit. I’ll even include some demi-chaotic selections so you can see my differentiation between reasonable abstract impressionistic quality and canvas boogers.

Now addressing subjectivity from a musical angle… just last night I was engaged in some musician chat where I had instance to heartily decry Rolling Stone magazine for its travesty of a Top 100 Guitarists of All Time list. What a disgrace this list was. Seriously. They put Kurt Cobain (whose music is thusly rank by any name) at number twelve?! He should have never come near this list. And poor Eddie Van Halen was only listed at 70? And oh so excrutiating… the monsters of guitar themselves… Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and John Petrucci (who together just released a way-cool DVD of their 2005 G3 Tour) did not even make the list?! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?

Musically, the above example is but a small morsel of the backward valuations some mindless conformists in popular culture have assigned to music. Now… you might say that Rolling Stone does not represent all of modern pop culture. I agree, but upon casual inspection pop culture is replete with examples. You may also say that some of these examples are from competitive market forces. I might agree, but the radio is a free market, and how many times have you turned on the radio to find nothing but garbage? How many top-selling albums feature not even one truly talented artist? How many of us know an instrumentalist or vocalist who is mind-alteringly skilled at their craft yet living on a paltry wage… while talentless figureheads rake in mad duckets (read big money) by mere and ridiculous chance? It’s enough to drive a Republican to listen to NPR.

Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don’t listen, and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.   -Oscar Wilde

You don’t have to walk the streets of NYC long to find local musicians and artists who are not featured in any galleries or music halls… but who are creating incredible music or paintings right in front of you on the sidewalks. I remember seeing a group of three dudes who looked like clean bums, with tattered military vet looking attire and scruffy features… and they were armed only with a couple jar lids, four or five cans of spray paint, a few small pieces of cardboard, and several blank pieces of paper that looked 17×14. Large crowds would gather and watch as one of these “bums” turned a piece of white paper into an exquisite and detailed landscape work featuring glowing moons or sunsets. The colors were vibrant and the overall work would have looked more-than-appropriate in a black contemporary-framed glass case sitting in an upscale wine bar.

So what does all of this mean? I dunno… it’s subjective, you see. But let me leave you with this…

Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.   -Blaise Pascal