Biography of John Myung
Friday, September 15, 2017
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John Myung is one of the founders of Dream Theater and the original personality of Dream Theater who still survives with John Petrucci. Beginning when he attended the music school at barklee-Boston in 1986 at that time he met with John Petrucci and Mike portnoy and they agreed to establish a band called Majesty. But a year after they get an offer for recording the band name originally Majesty was forced to be replaced with Dream Theater because there is already a band from California that uses that name, Dream Theater was taken from the name of a cinema in California which means th e theater of dreams.
John Myung other than a very skilled bass player is also known as the most mysterious Dream Theater personnel. This is because in every live concert or in a video clip he rarely appears. But even so he is known to be very active in giving tutorials on music even if asked about the techniques in playing bass he will explain for a long time. John myung is also one of the highly disciplined Dream Theater personnel in practice proven with him taking the practice every day for six hours with John Petrucci and also he always do warming down or cooling each concert finished. Currently John Myung is one of two personnel Dream Theater with John Petrucci left after Mike Portnoy decides to quit Dream Theater.
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Biography of John Myung
BY: ADMIN MEME THEATER INDONESIA ON: 13.56 SHARE & COMMENT
Born on January 24, 1967 in [chicago] and grew up in Long Island, New York. His mother often listened to classic music when he was little, and when Myung was 5 years old, he took a violin course. Then when John Myung was 15 years old, his neighbors approached him to play bass on his neighbor band, then Myung assumed that Bass had 4 strings equal to the violin, so he could learn it fast and from then on he switched to Bass guitar and from that moment on he never again play the violin.
John is the only member of Dream Theater who lives on Long Island with his wife Lisa and 2 children, Brandon and Christian Myung.
If seen from its history, Dream Theater was born in the 1980s with the concept of combining the color of a trendy metal hair band (then) with AOR pop color and progressive rock of the 1970s. Because progressive rock itself is a liberal concept of music and is a dialectic that can contain elements of western serialist ("classical") music, jazz, ethnic music and avant garde experimentation, the combination of progressive rock with metal makes their music sound complicated. However, because the dominant factor in their music remains the metal element and its AOR (along with avant garde and jazz evasion in its progressive rock color), Dream Theater becomes a popular band and the musical complexity becomes something that adds to its appeal feels "foreign"). Even Dream Theater is then considered to pioneer a new subgenre, which is progressive metal (prog metal). Myung, as his bassist, became famous as one of the world's world-class bass guitar virtuosos.
Introverted and not very talkative, John Myung seemed to prefer to talk to his instrument. Such was the impression while witnessing Myung workshop at Balai Sarbini organized by Yamaha Corporation Japan in cooperation with PT Yamaha Musik Indonesia Distributor on Friday, February 25th ago. Myung demonstrated his stunning technical talents. It has a fingerpicking technique like classical guitar technique, but uses three fingers of the right hand to play the scales (ring finger, middle, and pinky), beyond the standard classical guitar that generally does it with two fingers. Thus, Myung more easily play with high speed. Excerpts were powered in accordance with the color of metal music that he played.
Myung's advantages are in the technique of playing with high speed, according to the demands of Dream Theater music. Such capability certainly requires a high discipline of practice. The discipline seems to have ingrained within Myung, who from the age of five studied the violin for 10 years.
Indeed Myung is a rocker, and his playing idiom is also subject to the tradition of bassist rock. The three big bassists he confessed most influenced were Chris Squire (Yes), Geddy Lee (Rush), and Steve Harris (Iron Maiden), all bassist rock. However, as a musician who grew up in the modern era, Myung also studied the techniques of jazz bassists, as he showed in his workshop by playing harmonics taken from the concept of Jaco Pastorius.
Inspirators who influenced John Myung like Steve Harris and Geddy Lee, as well as bands like Rush, Yes and Iron Maiden, who also became inspirations of John Petrucci. Also he often listens to bands like jane's addiction, Red Hot Chilli Peppers as well as classic and blues music.
As a former student of Berklee College of Music, it is not surprising that Myung can play a variety of musical styles. He can, for example, perform slapping techniques as he demonstrated in his previous workshop in Jakarta several years ago. However, he remains a rocker and has had the maturity of an artist's soul to take a stand. His refusal to play slapping this time (even requested) on the grounds of disliking the technique (reminding him that he had demonstrated it in Jakarta in his previous workshop) shows the maturity of the attitude.
Myung is a technical virtuoso, but is not as prominent as the explorer of harmony and melody. Dream Theater tends to be selective in absorbing progressive rock elements. Like the progressive band, Dream Theater also adopted modern western seriosa music composition techniques, but from the three main early twentieth century (neoclassical, expressionism, and impressionist) schools, only the neoclassical (Stravinskian) elements were absorbed in the form of rhythmic complexity by count odd or subdivisions that change.
Myung, as a former violinist, has certainly been exposed to this music, although it is not certain that Myung was the pioneer of the rhythmic intricacies in Dream Theater music. Meanwhile, in the syntax of harmony, Dream Theater is not as complex as some other progressive bands that adopt avant-garde exploration or jazz voicing harmonization, chromaticism, or atonalism. Dream Theater is more likely to survive in functional harmony with a diatonic base (note: not all western diatonic music) and retains the aesthetics of the modern pop music industry. Therefore, Myung plays more traditional bass function (more conservative than Chris Squire and Geddy Lee), but increases his aural visibility with technical awesomeness. The function of the bass guitar is mainly to play metal riffs. It is relatively rare to explore melody and harmony than some other well-known bassist.
When appearing soloist, Myung tends to display technical skills rather than melodic aspects to strengthen harmony, while there are other bassist who adopt solo transcripts John Coltrane and other legend jazz to develop their improvisational aspects. Most probably Myung also studied the transcripts. What is clear, he played cello suite transcript JS Bach. However, in his career he tends not to appear so, but when it comes time to appear as a soloist, he tends to appear as virtuoso rock ala Eddie Van Halen (but on the bass guitar). Not very rich in melody or harmony but full of techniques such as two handed tapping and high-speed picking techniques. Not that Myung is incapable of exploring melody and harmony. It does so sporadically. However, in a world-class bassist, he does not stand out as a specialist in the field.
Another noteworthy thing is Myung's involvement in the design of the instrument he uses, namely the six-stringed bass guitar Yamaha RBXJM2 ("JM" on RBXJM2 is Myung's initials). Myung chose a six-string bass guitar (not a new thing) because it has a wider range of tones than a standard four-string bass guitar. Myung chose the pickup (string capture component) designed by Seymour Duncan to produce a sound that can be used flexibly in the recording studio and can adapt to various musical situations. Outside it also comes with 3 band EQ that makes Myung freely adjust the sound variations.
John Myung is an example of someone who has achieved achievement in a field and the way he wants to. Indonesian musicians can learn from the discipline and high commitment that makes Myung managed to become a great musician.
The song he once created for Dream Theater is Learning To Live on Images and Words and Trial of Tears album Falling Into Infinity. he has another project besides dream theater is Jelly clock. Together with John Petrucci, the two became key witnesses and main actors of Dream Theater wake up to the band's existence to date.
John Myung can be said to be the most mysterious Dream Theater person. This is because the figure that rarely appears in the news or statements that come directly from him. In fact, one might still wonder whether John Myung ever spoke.
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