Again, something I never said. You're really reaching now, since you keep trying put words in my mouth. Enjoy your chops and leave the good stuff to those of us who can appreciate uniqueness and character. 
No offence or anything, but no one needs to put words in your mouth to interpret an implication, which is mostly what I see happening. Your comments might imply something, then you deny that you said that version of the interpretation. I'm not saying that happened every time, but it did sound like you made an implication about JP, at least by comparison with the way you worded that statement.
On a separate topic, it's also worth pointing out that JP is slowly "winding down" in terms of skill. Many of his chromatic runs are done "let's make it to the end on time" vs the solid reproduction of the album material back in the day.
Again, this is all said in comparison to Brian May. I think it's pretty safe to judge JP's impact on the world of guitar playing at this point, since he's slowly winding down. And when you compare the corpus of both players by the time they wound down, Brian clearly was way ahead.
And to put it really succinctly, Brian May is a legend. John Petrucci, as good as he is, is not.
Jumping the gun a bit? What could possibly make you determine that JP is 'winding down'? I'm not suggesting this will be the case, but I wouldn't assume so much as they're nearly done. For all we know DT hasn't hit their prime and are only half way through their careers. Besides, what does that even mean, winding down? Chances are an experienced guitarist is more likely to be able to integrate more of the styles they've played over the years to demonstrate even more versatility.
To be fair, the 60's and 70's were the ideal time to claim legend status. Since the 90's and onwards, the rock music market had become so fragmented (this is a good thing) that there are simply no more legends of the instrument/vocal, everything has been done and invented before. Coming from someone who's favorite guitarist is Brian May, I think technical skill is way underrated nowadays because appreciating it gives you the reputation of the anti-musical nerd who jerks off to Yngwie Malmsteen, while the truth is way simpler - higher technical skill gives you more leeway and allows you to compose and play out anything you could possibly imagine. When combined with excellent songwriting, it gives you magnificent pieces of work such as... well, Images and Words? 
For what it's worth, I don't think you could claim Brian May or David Gilmore are less technically skilled than JP? There is no god-given talent to make a prodigy play like David Gilmore plays, there is no way you can just pick up a guitar and translate emotion into sound. A lot of cold calculation and nerding off with the guitar must be done before you're capable of writing music history like the guitarists of the 70's did. A lot of the stuff they did then was cutting edge.
Yeah, I agree with a lot of what you've said here but I'll also use your comment as an outlet to make a few points.
So if something is cutting edge, it's going to be more renown and memorable. So, what happens when someone emulates one of these 'legendary' styles in a similar way but also somehow objectively; improves upon it technically (perhaps by having more variation, less repetition). The new creation inspired by the legendary creation could have all the criteria that could make it debatably superior to the original. But it was written today and doesn't get as much recognition. It won't have as much of an impact, and due to the paradoxical nature of it's composition requiring the aforementioned influence, can never have a comparable impact because it's not cutting edge. So what determines that someone gets legendary status? That they pioneered, or founded a certain style? That's one way for sure, but how does one become a legend today? My living up to the preconceived status of these former legends? My trying to emulate them as closely as possible until they get recognition? Or do they have to come up with something completely unique and obscure so they can be regognised as innovative instead of being traditionally contemporary.
I guess my point is, it's always gonna be subjective so unless we can come up with some kind of guitar player versatility test with various excersises to assess the players, based on: ability (skill/style), creative potential and improvisational ability, understanding of musical structures and patterns (theory), performance ability/technique (by sight, ear or memory). And no matter what test there is, it'd still be as useless as any other "objective analayse" because of subjective interpretation and the inability to accurately measure abstract attributes. This is just my point of view as a music teacher, I would never bother making these comparisons with any sort of certainty. And for what it's worth, I prefer JPs style because I appreciate less predictable musical patterns favoured by prog in general (not that May doesn't have some of these qualities). But I can't determine who is a better player because there's a point that a musician reaches where the measurement of their skill transcends the simple conception of what generally makes a good player. Obviously a learner is still developing their identity, which can take years. But clearly May and Petrucci are not beginners, they have developed and cemented their styles over many years, and have a firm grip on how to play their instrument in a variety of ways. They could probably both express whatever comes into their head on their instrument which will result in different appeal of different material due to different influences. Not one of us can assume the other can't play a certain style, because they probably could if they wanted to. I think Queen's body of work is kind of beyond what Dream Theater has achieved popularity wise, but hardly any of that recognition is because of the guitar player. It's in spite of him for sure, but I think you'll find most people that casually appreciate Queen don't even know who Brian May is. So I wouldn't use Queen's popularity to determine the skill of the guitarist and then relatively compare that to the success of another band to measure skill.
Topic: Show your love for JP in another useless poll! (Read 6833 times)
