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Originally Posted by Astrapto  Allow me to revitalize this thread.
I am a Dream Theater fan, and have spent hours contemplating John Myung's skills and role.
I have come to the conclusion that he is a robot. He can technically play anything that anyone tells him to play, but he does not have good ideas to actually contribute to the the music.
He can play simply, or match the other guys' riffs, but usually he is just along for the ride, and he's not worth paying attention to even when he's audible.
He practices obsessively for hours and hours. He practices while the other guys have fun, even since the Majesty days. But why?
Why would someone spend so much time practicing when they don't create music? He sometimes taps; I've never seen him slap; he played his share of harmonics back in the 90s.I would expect one who practices six hours a day to have a mastery of extended techniques, and be a prolific writer.
He could at least play a harmony line once in a while! Would that be so hard, to play a third above Petrucci instead of playing another unison?
Many of his solos are based around patterns. Look at Metropolis: F# in three different octaves, and one B just for fun. He plays it multiple times, then moves it up without variation. What a glorious, innovative, and moving solo. Erotomania and Dance of Eternity: Half of these solos are just patterns that he probably played thousands of times before forming Majesty.
The only time I can totally hear him on their newest album is during one of te cool guitar-keyboard unison lines in the intro of The Count of Tuscany. Rocking the root whole notes. And when the key changes come a while later, you can hear him playing root eighth notes. This is one of the big progressive bassists? The heir to Steve Harris, Geddy Lee, Cliff Burton? On When Day and Dream Unite he was audible, and he sometimes played really cool stuff.
It's one thing to serve the song. It's another to put little thought into your lines, copy your bandmates, and allow yourself to be buried in the mix album after album.
He's a great technical player and I admire his dedication- but what happened to his spirit of innovation or creativity? He's not setting a good example. |
You should look into his writing credits from the early records - he has written music and lyrics for the band. "Learning To Live" has quite a bit of him behind it.
I've been into DT now for 20 years. I've watched that band basically become a dual-dictatorship of Petrucci and Portnoy. Those guys are now producing every record. They were a more interesting band when there were more songwriting influences (Myung and Moore), and outside producers were used. Myung knows where his main paycheck comes from, and he really doesn't seem to be the type to rock the boat.
There's typically very little left in the sonic spectrum on a DT record for him because of Portnoy and Petrucci. The kicks are all over the frequencies the meat of the bass could be in, and Petrucci's rhythm guitar tone is eating into it from the top as well. Again that's the problem with having a guitarist and drummer producing records by themselves IMO.
Myung is a fantastic player and I think he still has a lot of feel and nuance. Many of the riffs he's presented to play with in the band - I mean there's not much you can do there unless you want to absolutely stick out like a sore thumb. I was in a dual guitar "progressive" metal band about 6 years ago where many of the songs where just straight double-kick and machine gun riffs following it. What am I supposed to do with that? Either I can A) play some entirely opposing off-beat rhythm or odd melodic part which makes me sound like an attention whore, or B) double what's there to fill it out.
Also, why would he need to show slap or tap to prove he's a worthy "heir"? Most of the time those are wank techniques anyway unless the song truly calls for it. It's almost like you're measuring a bass player's worth by how many "tricks" he uses. Progressive shouldn't mean flashy - it should mean "moving forward". Why play a third above just for the hell of it? If it doesn't work sonically, that'd be pretty selfish to do just so he could stand out. The reality is DT has an established sound now, and IMO he's doing what needs to be done to accomplish that sound. The band itself stopped being really innovative or exciting over a decade ago. I still like their records but it's not the same. They're basically a business now looking to keep things just the way they are. Myung's "job" is to fill out the sound. I'd argue a bass line can only be as interesting as a song allows it to be. Otherwise, you just sound like you're overplaying.
It's kind of funny you mention Harris, Lee and Burton. In the first two cases, those guys drove the whole sound of the band. Harris is essentially the leader of Iron Maiden and writes the majority of the material, and Rush is a trio with lots of room for the bass to breathe, and again, a large portion of the music in that band is being written by the bassist. None of this is true with Myung and DT.
In Burton's case, if he were still around I'm confident he'd be seen as a leader in the band just as Hetfield or Ulrich are. He was a big reason the songs were the way they were on those first few records. I liked Cliff a lot but was never a big fan of his sound or his fingerstyle play - I actually felt sonically Newsted was a much better fit for the band. But Cliff's contributions to the songs were invaluable.
So in closing, give Myung a break!
