John Myung, Billy Sheehan among others...

[KeishabaSubbota]

This is my first thread so if it is pointless please excuse me. If you don`t understand what im trying to say please excuse me too.

The fact is that im a big Dream Theater and Mr.Big/Niancin BUT something happend with this 2 guys (among others)
I really like and apreciate the technique in both players.
About Myung i should say that
learning his bass lines are a great excersise (specially in the complex signatures).
And when i want to play over a record "SFAM" and "Images" are always on my list. BUT except a few lines (for example: Throught Her Eyes) and REALLY COOL CHOPS (the always mentioned solo of Metropolis pt.1)
i found that i really don`t like his basslines and hardly amazed me with something really creative. Most of the time the only thing he does, is play the exact same thing that goes on guitar, in the bass.(ok, that`s not easy thing i know!)
But i never heard a cool drum/bass arragenment and even read that MP didn`t have JM on his monitors.
In some lower degree it happends the same thing with Billy Sheehan.
Take the example of "Addicted to that Rush". AWESOME and i mean AWESOME chops, but if you take away all the pirotecnics of the song you found nothing.
What im trying to ask is:
Am i crazy? are they only a bunch of great chops? any other bass player shares my feelings?
JM and BS fans please don`t kill me and show me that im wrong and please tell wich bass lines i should check out!
peace

[SirCanealot]

The problem with John Myung is the guitar. Petrucii seems obsessed with double every riff with both bass and guitar. Their earlier albums seemed to have less of this problem where Petrucii seemed to be happy playing a simple chord or distorted power chords, alonging Myung to grove.

Now I know Myung comes up with a lot of the riffs, but I'm not sure how much of the problem is Myung or Petrucii. It's also known that Myung isn't as involved in the music as he once was, and dislikes their current writing method. He seemed to be getting more into it as the last tour went by, so we can only hope for the next album (recording at christmas...). They've been in and out of the studio doing **** for years, so god knows...

[KeishabaSubbota]

we all hope for...
thanx for your answer

[bassist324]

You check out some of Dream Theaters really early stuff, like The Majesty Demos and When Dream and Day Unite, Myung was much more active back then. Songs like "A Fortune in Lies" and "The Ytse Jam" feature more active bass lines.

[SirCanealot]

Yeah, When Dream and Day Unite has INSANE bass ^^;;

Aparently, during the writing of Images and Words, someone pulled John Myung aside and suggest he play more root-orientated bass lines. He tried it and ended up liking it, cutting back his bass a bit.

Still, Images and Words has some great lines ^_^