Anyway, I think Petrucci's technical ability is rather overstated, playing fast and all over the place is not the only factor in technical chops, a great understanding of melodicism and the ability to apply your skills in a tasteful way is also a big part of it.
Take even less technically skilled guitarists into consideration, like Gilmour or Santana for example. To do so much with so few notes isn't as easy as people make it out to be, it takes a great understanding of melody and structure. Gilmour and Santana could do more with 4 notes than Petrucci can do with 100.
There's a lot of great technnical players out there, and a lot who also know the difference between showing off their ability in a creative and tasteful way, and just plain wanking a whole song to death.
Petrucci is not one of those players, I've never heard him do anything that he didn't run into the ground with tiresome guitar gymnastics. I'd say he's ridiculously high as it is and that mainly has to do with his influence in the shred guitar wanking community.
Compare Petrucci to most other prog guitarists. Like Robert Fripp, Steve Howe, Andy Latimer, Jan Akkerman and Steve Hackett. Sure they liked to show off and play really complex, over the top stuff. But they also knew how to craft melody and suit a song perfectly, as well as not steal all the spotlight from the other band members. They could also play catchy riffs or really simple, beautiful parts when they needed to. I have yet to hear Petrucci prove himself capable of doing such a thing.
Then again, Petrucci is far from being a progressive guitarist, I quite hate it when people refer to him as such, he's a generic metal shredder in a so called prog band, that's it. I think it's just plain idiotic when people claim he's better than Gilmour and Page. But when people try and put him on the same plain as Robert Fripp, I just find it offensive, Petrucci is an insult to everything that prog rock is supposed to be about.
That's one thing I hate about DT fans, most of them are metal fans who wouldn't know prog if it bit them in the ass. So yeah, if you only listen to DT and Symphony X, don't call yourself a prog fan, I can't stand that.
Sorry, prog elitism overload, I need to cool down.
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