John Petrucci VS. Michael Romeo

Dark Lucidity wrote:  40% is pretty decent concidering how many dt fan boys dominate this forum.

And be sure, most who voted for Petrucci may not have even listened to any S.X. album totally. It is like, accepting there's a god, without reading anything against it.. A fatal tragedy

dysrhytm wrote: AND FOR THE END, nobody mentioned it : Michael Romeo is just the better SONG COMPOSER, John Petrucci couldn't ever in his life compose something like "THE ODYSSEY"!

Yeah its the 1st time I agree with you mate! He surelly would never compose something similar

dysrhytm wrote: Muhahaha, that's gonna be fun! AtLossForWords wrote: I couldn't disagree more! Petrucci is the most controlled speed guitarist there will ever be. Just look at Scenes From a Memory. Solos like Fatal Tragedy are lightning speed with excellent string skipping. How could you agree? you are too obsessed of john petrucci. And imo he's not really controlled sometimes, and the solo in Fatal Tragedy: I think Michael Romeo would have added more notes and it would have sounded better than. I don't see any problems in the Fatal Tragedy solo.  Petrucci is one of the few guitarist that has a perfect flow of harmonics in his solos.  Many guitarists including MJR have too many solos where they are off in their harmonies and are playing notes that have nothing to do with the other overtones. King of Loss wrote: You know, John Petrucci also plays in the Neo-Classical style not really at least he sometimes tries. I doubt you've heard An Evening with John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess.  Petrucci's Neo-Classical playing i much cleaner than Romeo's.  He also plays in many more keys than Romeo who usually sticks with open minor position scales. AtLossForWords wrote: Their technicality is not on the same level at all! Has Romeo ever shown the ability to solo over a song in the duration that Petrucci does. Has Romeo ever shown he can play solo clearly rather than in a shread style. Has Romeo every shown any control with harmonics. Petrucci exceeds Romeo in most all aspects of guitar. Well I even consider Michael Romeo being better technically than john petrucci and what do you mean with "Has Romeo ever shown the ability to solo over a song in the duration that Petrucci does"?? Have you ever heard his solo album? I guess not... And all this talk about shredding, Michael Romeo is much more controlled than John Petrucci and every solo is so much more than speed and shredding, you would notice that if you wouldn't be so fanatic and ignorant... And Romeo has never shown control with harmonics?, I hope you are not being serious, because that's really glorifying your incompetence, thank you for this one ! And Petrucci exceeds Romeo in all aspects of guitar, muhaha : COMPOSITION, CLASSICAL STYLING, TAPPING, STRING SKIPPING? ehhhh.... The best solo work my Romeo has ever done is on Ayreon's Dawn of a Million Souls.  It sounds totally different from anything he's done in Symphony X, but it still lacks the clarity of someone like John Petrucci. I could easily say the same about Petrucci, saying that Romeo's solos are more than speed and shreadding is just rhetoric.  Come up with some examples of what souls Romeo's exhibits more rythmnic control in then somone like Petrucci.  Petrucci's solos have a constant motion to them.  A song like The Spirit Carries on starts out with slower notes building harmonies for the scale and then develops something with great speed, rythym, and control.  Petrucci's tempos are excellent.  Very few guitarists can play so fast at so slow of a tempo in time. Romeo's harmonics sound like some nasty Dimebag guitar tone.  Their so overdistorted, you couldn't remix them enough to hear the pitch he's trying to play.  Romeo has no control with harmonics whatsoever.  Stop calling me ignorant, an hominem has no place here. AtLossForWords wrote: That post looks like a bunch of rhetoric to me. John Petrucci keeps mindless shreadding to a minimum in Dream Theater and in JP and JR. There is a difference between mindless shreadding and musical technique. Petrucci is often on the side of musical technique. Nicolo Paganini was a musician who played extremely fast for his solos, did anyone accuse that violinist of mindless shreadding? Mike Romeo does mindless shread. Look at Smoke and Mirrors, look at Sea of Lies, look at almost any heavy song Symphony X has ever done, and the solo is sloppy mindless shreadding. Mike Romeo is not my idea of an emotional guitarist considering that so many of his solos are pretty much neo-classical solos which are not based off of emotion. Romeo's solos lack structure. It sounds like he just put a bunch of notes in a song and there's a solo. Petrucci uses an awful lot of vocal motifs in his solos to make them fit the song better. Scenes From a Memory and some parts of Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence feature quite a bit of this. John Petrucci is the much superior impoviser here. Let's not forget John Petrucci attended Berklee, quite possibly the most famous jazz school in the US. I don't think Berklee would allow Petrucci to enter if he couldn't improvise. Petrucci also improvises quite a bit live. Do I need to remind you of the Hollow Years solo or the additional solo at the end of In the Name of God. I know of Petrucci's impovisation. I don't know if Romeo ever improvises live. Again the question, MINDLESS SHREDDING? => pls define it, thx! If you don't recognize the sense of michael romeos solos, it's because of you incompetence/ignorance/idleness, so don't call it mindless or lack of structure... Also sweet that you are so naive You can't be sure that someone improvises on stage... Just the player on stage knows it, don't trust everything...And Berklee is not just about improvisation, also about money... AND FOR THE END, nobody mentioned it : Michael Romeo is just the better SONG COMPOSER, John Petrucci couldn't ever in his life compose something like "THE ODYSSEY"!

Mindless shredding is pointless w**kery that has no place in the song.  There is a fine like between using speed in a solo, and playing a technical solo with a mass amount of speed that has nothing to do with the song.  Sea of Lies is a perfect example.  Sea of Lies has a solo that does not fit the song whatsoever.  There are no musical motifs for the song, the only thing Sea of Lies solo has in common with the song is the key signature.

Saying that I'm ignorant is totally ignorant of you.  You say I'm ignorant for not seeing things in Romeo's solos that you do.  When in fact i see Romeo's solos I see different things from you.  Does that make you ignorant?

Romeo is not the lone composer of Symphony X.  Mike Romeo, Mike Pinella, and Thomas Miller were the composers of Symphony X.  Now it's switched to be more of Romeo, Pinella, and either Rullo or LePond with Miller's abscence.  If you say Romeo is a better composer because of what he has done in Symphony X, I could easily say that Petrucci is a much better composer because of what Dream Theater has done with their composing.  Symphony X has nowhere near the song quality of Dream Theater.  From Scenes From a Memory through Octavarium every Dream Theater song (excluding segues) average about 8-10 minutes.  Symphony X manages an average of 6 at best.  Dream Theater, throughout their career have consistently put out higher quality songs and higher quality albums with a more distinct difference in each one.  Symphony X has many albums of a very similar vein, and very few songs that reach the quality of Divine Wings of Tragedy or The Accolade.  Symphony X albums typically have two good songs and a lot of filler matierial.  There is no way Romeo is a better composer than Petrucci alone or as a team.  Symphony X will never reach of musical depth of Dream Theater.  Symphony X is a great metal band, but a joke progressive band. 

God i hope Petrucci never composes anything like the Odyssey when  I listen a Dream Theater album with a maximum of two progressive songs, there will be a sad day in the history of progressive metal.

So you don't agree with everything he says ;)

And "No, Romeo does not repeat himself in almost every album! Stop being ignorant, and listen with a little more attention, otherwise your coments are nonsense!"

AtLossOfWords, I call you ignorant because you are always insulting Michael Romeo, and most of the songs are wrong
and it's obvious that you haven't heard the Michael Romeos guitar work enough and also that you are a fan boy who admires John Petrucci overall...
Fatal Tragedy is not really fluent and I don't really like it, so it's again just taste and I like a fully filled solo more than such breaks, although I like slow solos as well but this changes in tempo (fatal tragedy) could have been better.
I have heard An Evening with John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess, but I still think Michael Romeo is a far better neo-classical player, one of the best along with Tony MacAlpine and Stephen Forte.
Michael Romeo's solos are far more rhytmic, John Petruccis solo tones have almost the same distance in between he just tries to get something like 230 beats per minute and so it's fast, sure but the same number of tones within every beat. The solo in dawn of a Million Souls is one of the best I've ever heard, very emotional, controlled and
perfectly fittig.
Musically there could have been a better solo in Sea of Lies but what you ignore is the fact that solos also have a connection with the lyrics and the atmosphere, please pay attention to that too and every musician thinks something when he writes a solo and I think Michael Romeo is a bit better than you and I think he thought about the solo.
And length is nothing special...In a long song you can put so many different ideas and it's harder to write a short song about 5 minutes than writing a song about 15 minutes...Furthermore, if they would play every verse and the chorus 4 times like dream theater do and put some interlude in the songs would also be about 10 minutes...
And the best music of Dream theater were the first cd's with Kevin Moore who is really genious and wrote most of the music and John Petrucci alone is not as good at composing as Michael Romeo...just listen to every song about 50 times...especially THE ODYSSEY which you definitly didn't understand, I think I'm near to fully understand it, after hearing it 150-200 times, give it a chance, I've the impression you listen to it one time, telling you in your mind "what a sh*t what a sh*t,dream theater is far better..."!
And yes Xymphony, you are right, Symphony X have not reallly a (total) loss like Dream Theater often have and furthermore I think Symphony X are far more creative. Octavarium lacks of the earlier originality Dream Theater had.
"Octavarium can be compared to?: The question is what you can't compare it to!" and that's right because almost every song is just a cheap copy of other bands.
John Petrucci has never shown really talents in SONG writing.
And before you go on discussing, listen to every Symphony X album (50 times), Russell Allen's solo album, Michael Romeo live (especially the jams with Michael Pinnella),
Vitalij Kuprij - Forward And Beyond, Michael Romeo's solo cd and watch his video...




Edited by dysrhytm

Well it is bad because some people just know petrucci and
don't know Michael Romeo. The same with John Lennon.
Some maybe don't know Lou Reed, so they are voting for John Lennon.

^Hah, thats always the easiest way out!

brothers?!

TheLamb wrote: About the Discussion, I find it extremely annoying that you blame Michael Romeo's loss in this poll on the fact that this forum has too many "DT fan boys". It's ridiculous!

I think no one did that which you said. I mean, D.T. is a far more popular band, and has too many die hard fans. We said that we are "SURPRISED" that Romeo got more than %40 percentage of the votes. I, personally, don't blame anyone at least. I am surprised and happy about the result ;)

Xymphony wrote: TheLamb wrote: About the Discussion, I find it extremely annoying that you blame Michael Romeo's loss in this poll on the fact that this forum has too many "DT fan boys". It's ridiculous! I think no one did that which you said. I mean, D.T. is a far more popular band, and has too many die hard fans. We said that we are "SURPRISED" that Romeo got more than %40 percentage of the votes. I, personally, don't blame anyone at least. I am surprised and happy about the result ;)

I'm not happy about the SG vs. Symph X poll! Democracy sux!

At least SG win in the googlefight! My little victory!