Classic guest lesson: John Petrucci's ultimate

guitar warm-ups
By Charlie Griffiths published March 23, 2020

Flex those fretting fingers and prime your picking power with the
ultimate warm-up routine with Dream Theater's iconic guitarist
 

(Image credit: Future)

Legato warm-up
I do things in a very methodical way,” states John when introducing this fret hand warm-
up. “The purpose of this exercise is to get the blood flowing.” By this, John means that you
should begin your warm-up by just loosening up with some short scale fragments, which
we’ve tabbed here.

No metronome and no pressure, at least to begin with. With a very basic warm-up under
your belt you can move on to John’s various fingering exercises that ensure no muscle
group is left out. Remember, these patterns don’t necessarily fit within a particular scale
and are not meant to sound musical, but it is important that each note sounds crips, clean
and clear. 

(Image credit: Future)

(Image credit: Future)

The next stage in Petrucci’s legato warm-up is what he calls “finger combinations”. These
fret box diagrams show each combination. The first two patterns cover four frets and John
uses fingers 1, 3, 4 and 1, 2, 4 respectively. “Then I’ll do a stretch,” continues John, as
shown in the second two diagrams. 
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This time the patterns cover five frets and John uses fingers 1, 2, 4, followed by 1, 3, 4.
Simply play through each combination from low to high, like a scale. Pick the first note on
each string followed by hammer-ons for the rest of the notes.

PLAY SOUND

(Image credit: Future)

One note per string picking warm-up

"Definitely an important aspect of my playing is keeping my hands in sync,” says John,
which means it’s time to turn your attention to your picking hand. John’s approach to
picking practice is, once again, extremely methodical: “I’ll start with one-note per-string
exercises, then two-note per-string, then three, then four.” 

Here we’re focussing on the one-note per-string idea, which is an approach ideally suited
for arpeggios, but rather than sweep picking John prefers to alternate-pick in order to
articulate every note and, as John explains, “it takes care of inside and outside the string
picking”.

John's hit and miss philosophy

John has a clever way of building speed – he calls it his “hit and miss philosophy”. The
idea is that you play faster than you are really capable, and, rather than thinking about
hitting each individual note, you think about generally keeping your hands in sync.  As
John says: “I wouldn’t recommend you do it all the time, but it’s a useful tool and you can
gain a lot of speed from it.”

Try applying John’s ‘hit and miss’ method to his arpeggio exercises. After you’ve done five
minutes of controlled practice with a metronome, finish off by blasting through the pieces
at high speed. Even though at first you’ll probably miss more notes than you hit, the point
is to let your hands experience the ‘feeling’ of moving fast. At some point your hands will
hopefully synchronise.

https://www.musicradar.com/totalguitar/john-petruccis-ultimate-warm-up-guest-lesson-533027