John Petrucci brings you...ROCK DISCIPLINE (a picture thread if the pictures can fit)

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off to the bumsex thredd...

...it's actually one of the only instructional videos mentioned on the thread worth a bean. It's really cool.

1 Modes No More Mystery, Frank G $49.95 1 $49.95

Oh, you better post that shit.

JOHN PETRUCCI: ROCK DISCIPLINE
DVD begins with opening credits sequence of footage of Petrucci onstage playing hilarious cheese rock power ballad solo on an Ibanez asshat multicolored dork guitar of some sort.

"Hi, I'm John Petrucci. Welcome to my video."

He kind of talks like he's chewing his face. He also has the basic doofus disposition of most guitar teachers I've met. The first thing he wants you to do is tune to his open A string. It's weird because he goes "Here's my open A." and then there's like 15 more seconds of his onstage footage followed by an extremely goofy close up of him playing an open A in the studio.

Warm up Exercises: Stretches and Massages

"Ooh! My arm just cracked, and yours might also!"
Now he's showing me his little stretch routine, some junior high P.E. type shit followed by the carpal tunnel wrist stretch shit that everybody knows. Then he streches his thumbs by pulling them back towards his wrist. This is some exciting shit right here.

"Now let's move on to massages" - he pauses for a few seconds like he thought there was gonna be a fade-out, then he suddenly starts talking again. I can't wait to see the blooper reel.
Now he's rubbing himself in various places.......
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..........okay, he's done!

Warm up exercises: Left Hand

You know who he's really starting to look like to me? Paul Reubens in his adult theater arrest mugshot, maybe crossed with a little Dave Grohl. Right now he's playing some boring arpeggios that he apparently uses to warm up. I just noticed his wedding ring - some poor woman is actually MARRIED to this guy?

BOOOOOORING! COME ON PETRUCCI, MAKE ME A PROG MONSTER!!!
This section seems excruciatingly long, but I'm sure it's only been like 5 minutes.

Warm up Exercises: Right Hand

"As you just heard, that exercise involved notes that were being arpeggiated intervalically." OH FFS, JUST GET ON WITH IT YOU TWAT!
Picking exercises using barre chords.....blah.
"Remember to pick down up down up down up down up"
Oh thank you, I've never even thought of doing it that way before! Grrrrrrrr......
Now we're practicing up down up down! Yaaaaaay!
double..........triple.......yawn.
Oh, he does it super fast with his FX on at the end, that was kinda cool.

On practicing....

I didn't anticipate this. Apparently there are mock interview lecture segments featuring Petrucci sitting at a mixing board trying to look professional. Here he just talks about having a huge file cabinet full of guitar exercises from magazines, books, videos and such split into four categories:
1. Scalar and linear examples
2. Arpeggiated examples
3. Left-hand or legato playing
4. Sweep picking
He practices files from each section every day in equal proportion.
Whatever........Oh, good he has his guitar again...

Exercises: Left and right hand
The one he's doing now sounds like something out of "Bitches Brew".
Just more warm up shit.
"Now, you should also practice the same exact exercise starting on an upstroke as well, to make sure that you're...ambipickstrous"
That was one of his JOKES, people. He RAISED HIS EYEBROWS and everything!
He does some more variations on this exercise.....

"And that will wrap up our warm up exercises."
Thank the lord.

Technique: Speed and Accuracy
"blah blah metronome blah blah blah down up down up down up blah blah blah"
He's playing a major scale very slowly to a click.
He increases his speed until he's shredding. ho-hum.
Now he's doing chromatic shit.
Faster and faster. He's really quite skilled, I suppose. The one at 208bpm was pretty awesome sounding. Reminds me of the Bill and Ted soundtrack or something.
He does all this again with another scale.

First band...
Another mock-interview segment. He talks about playing the "Hey Hey My My" riff with a bunch of kids when he was 12. Who cares...

Scale Fragments and sequences
more speed building exercises played very slowly.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz......................
He shreds a little again after that and then shows how to develop these exercises into a sequence.
This DVD has a lot of this:
bum.....................bum..............................bum..........................bum....................bum
"And here's how I play it!"
bumbumbumbumbubmbumbubmbubmubmbmbumubmbubmubmubmumbbubmbubmbubmbubmbbububmbuubmbububmbbubbmbbubmbbubmbbubbmbm
This goes on and on until he does a solo demonstration to an electronic cheese ballad sequencer backing which is the most exciting part of the video so far!

About influences...
Another bullshit talking thing. At first he liked Black Sabbath, Zeppelin, The Who, Iron Maiden....Rush, Yes, Randy Rhodes AND THEN HE FINALLY DISCOVERED STEVE MORSE AND HIS LIFE CHANGED AND HE BOUGHT EVERY DREGS ALBUM and then Al Di Miola and Allan Holdsworth. Stevie Ray Vaughan blah blah etc.

Right Hand Technique: Picking Arpeggios
Talks about how difficult alternate picking quickly through arpeggios is for most guitarists, including him.
"Some guys have this taken care of, and uh...we'll have to shoot 'em all!"
Another JOKE. You can tell when he's trying to make a joke cuz he gets this rodenty little smirk on his face.
Oh great, he's come up with his own "etude" (FFS) to work out this problem. He demonstrates it. It's awful.
blah blah blah.....
OH NO ANOTHER "ETUDE" MAKE IT STOP!
He's the first rock guitarist I've ever seen pretentious enough to refer to an etude by its proper name. Like he's Segovia or some shit. Please.
Would it kill him to just say, "Here's a little thing I made up to help me practice this."?

Lessons & Berklee...
Talks about his nerdly Berklee education.

Left Hand Technique: Legato Playing
Exercising the left hand with hammerons and pulloffs. Some of it kinda sounds like "Eruption".
I forgot to mention that he is filmed with a purple lens filter for much of this. it really brings out his choadliness.
He wants us to massage ourselves again cuz now it's time to put it all together and shred!.
He makes like Steve Vai at the end of Crossroads for a few minutes, then plays some shit slow for a while, finally showing us again how fast A REAL ASSHOLE LIKE HIM can play it! Some VH tapping in there as well...

About the band...
Talks about his nerdly band Dream Theater. How much better they are now than when they started as teenagers etc.

Right Hand Technique: Sweep Picking
Yngwie time!
"It's sort of a weapon or tool to execute a fast flurry of notes!"
I have to admit that when he's doing this stuff it sounds fucking BADASS.
When he's demonstrating something sometimes he'll leave his mouth open and practically pant like a dog. He's a mouth breather, folks.
I gotta learn this sweeping stuff. The tournament guys are suckers for it. Teach me to sweep Mr. Miyagi!.....err, Petrucci.
ANOTHER "ETUDE", GAH!!!!!
...but this one actually sounds pretty cool with all the sweep picking.

Writing with the Band...
Talks about Dream Theater's writing process. I sure no one one ILX gives a flying fuck. He does mention liking Zappa's music, which is not a point against him in my book, but I know it is for some of us here.

Chordal Techniques: Building Chords
"By adding certain notes to these (power) chords we're gonna MUTATE them and we're gonna add some colors and drama to basic chord progressions"
Wheeee!
"Let's first make sure everyone knows what the power chord is."
FFS, I'm sure everyone who got past the Yngwie-style section of the DVD knows what a fucking power chord is, John.
This is all pretty basic Chord Theory.
He plays a godawful little progression he made up at the end of it. No wonder Dream Theater sucks so bad.
He says something about that progression not making much sense by itself. No shit. Then he does a song with his cheesy sequencer, complete with solo.
I sure hope we're almost done here...

John's Guitars and Live Stage Set Up
He shows off his wankeriffic gear setup. He's got one of those flashing rack FX units that looks like a spaceship control panel, of course.
He shreds a bit while demonstrating his FX.

"We've covered a lot of ground in this video and it's a lot of information to swallow!"
The credits have more onstage asshat footage. God damn this video is from 1995?

The blooper reel was no great shakes, it's mostly footage of him fucking up the introduction and saying his own name wrong. Not much in the way of guitar fuckups.

There's some more bonus features, but I have no intention of watching any of them any time soon:
Tuning Segment
Backstage With John
G3 Tour Footage
Interactive Tour of John's Guitar
Dream Theater discography
Additional Product Reviews

First a bio for people who don't know who Frank Gambale is (I didn't):
Frank Gambale is best-known for his fiery work with Chick Corea's Elektric Band. He was a student at the Guitar Institute of Technology while in his early twenties, wrote instructional books, and during 1983-1986, was on the school's faculty. He joined Corea in 1986, has also performed with Steve Smith's Vital Information, and has been a leader on his own rock-oriented dates for JVC. A collaboration with bassist Stu Hamm and drummer Steve Smith was another fruitful venture for Gambale, spawning several discs between the three that became increasingly ambitious as time went by.

OK, the thing about this DVD is that since it's basically an hour long lecture on one subject, it's not really conducive to a play by play the way the Petrucci one is.
Also, Gambale seems an affable, knowledgeable chap who doesn't really deserve or even inspire the kind of ridicule I gave to Petrucci. The post I made above really just applies to the intro, as the rest of it is heavy theory stuff that seems very well researched and thorough, and will actually take a few viewings for me to digest.
I will however, describe what led me to make that previous post:

The DVD opens with some incredibly cheap looking titles. I mean white on blue with no attempt at real graphic design whatsoever.
We then fade in to Frank Gambale playing a bright yellow Ibanez with many stickers on it (the same one shown on the DVD cover).
He is wearing a HOT PINK TWEETY BIRD T-SHIRT TUCKED INTO LEATHER PANTS WITH A BELT. Tweety is flying an airplane and wearing an aviator cap in the shirt picture. This is the kind of shirt that you would get your ass kicked for wearing to school in fourth grade.

It must be said that Gambale is one of the ugliest motherfuckers I have ever seen in my life. It's like Bea Arthur got gangbanged by Lou Reed, Hank Azaria, Johnny Cash and Richard Kline and their semen all magically mixed together and begat this hideous man. His hair is different from the DVD cover, looking rather like...well, Bea Arthur's in Golden Girls with a bad dye job.

So he's standing there playing along to a cheese ballad backing track (surprise!), and the lead lines he's playing wouldn't be out of place in some 80's TV drama theme song. That is to say until he begins shredding. When he does this it comes off so fluid and effortless that it makes Petrucci look like a total fucking pussy. Even more of one I mean. This is a jazz cat we're dealing with here - prog metal dinks can fuck right off.

He's there playing lead guitar to this track, shaking his fat middle-aged hips in this ridiculous getup, making little movements with his mouth that resemble a baby bird chirping for its food, singing along with his guitar line occasionally. THIS GOES ON FOR SIX AND A HALF MINUTES, and he still hasn't said a word. Fade out.

Fade in to Gambale playing a PINBALL MACHINE. He's got three of them lined up against the wall of the music room in what is apparently his house. He loses his ball, we are meant to assume, and then "notices" the camera. He's still wearing the pink Tweety shirt tucked into the leather pants...
"Hi, I'm Frank Gambale! Welcome to my new video!"
He speaks in a HIGH, LILTING AND SLIGHTLY EFFEMINATE AUSTRALIAN ACCENT! I almost lost my shit when he started talking.
"I'm not always working on the guitar or playing guitar, sometimes I'm playing pinball too! It's another one of my loves! Anyway I've just spent the last few months working on a subject for this video that we're gonna do that I think is a really important music subject that most guitar players aren't too clear on. The subject of modes. That's what we're gonna be dealing with right after I get done with this game. So let's get down to it!"
Then he goes back to playing pinball. Fade out.

Fade in to Gambale sitting in front of his recording gear with a HOT PINK Ibanez that does NOT match the hot pink of his tweety bird T-shirt, making the guitar look slightly orange by contrast. At this point the video goes into an intense modal theory lecture for nearly an hour that I'm sure will be of great use to me once I can get my head around it.

The video ends with a clip of him singing and playing one of his songs which sounds quite like Steely Dan. He even sings a bit like Donald Fagan. So, good on him. It's a lot better than Dream Theater.

Jeez. I wonder if Chris DeGarmo ever put one of these out.

They shd perhaps do a noel gallagher one.

BB King is such a gracious and modest person here it will just kill you. He is interviewed by a fawning fanboy Guitar World contributor throughout, and everytime fanboy says something about how great BB is, he just kind of puts his head down and blushes and says, "well...thank you".

The interview segments consist of BB and fanboy sitting down with their guitars, and BB will demonstrate licks and techniques to fanboy's accompaniment, explain where he got this and that idea from, etc. These segments are broken up by performance footage every 20 minutes or so, including a smokin' rendition of "Nobody Loves Me But My Mother".

The thing that really cracks me up about this DVD is that here we have BB King, a musician who is 1000 times more respected than a guy like who Petrucci who's devoted his life to learning every flash bastard technique under the sun could ever dream of being, and he's sitting here going "Well, I'm not actually very good with my fingers..." when attempting (and more or less failing) to demonstrate the old school country blues shuffle, and saying things like "Well, you should learn to play in every position.........of course I never did." This serves as a valuable lesson to anyone who may not know better: You don't have to know all that Berklee/GIT bullshit to be considered a good guitarist, just be yourself and be original and make the best of what you know how to do.
I recommend this DVD to anyone with even a passing interest in guitar.

There's not much to say about "Fretboard Logic" except that the producion values are rock bottom. It looks like something you'd see on Public Access or PBS in the middle of the night. It's basically just some totally nondescript guy running through fretboard memorization stuff like the CAGED sequence etc. and will be valuable to anyone who needs to learn this kind of thing.

If there's anything else of note once I've watched these in full, I'll report back.

Maybe we can change the parenthetical bit in the thread title from (a picture thread if the pictures can fit) to (Guitar DVDs reviewed HERE) or something like that.
I'd encourage anyone else who collects these to post reviews here as well.

ned i don't know if you saw this but it's amusing tone attorney content

Carr Mercury - Holy Grail of Tone - 800 (Lino Lakes)

Oh dear.