John Ro Myung is the bassist and a founding member of the progressive metal group Dream Theater.
Born on January 24, 1967, he played the violin from the age of five until he was asked to play electric bass in a local band when he was fifteen. He stuck with bass from then on, and after graduating from high school he enrolled at the Berklee College of Music, where he met future band mates John Petrucci (guitar) and Mike Portnoy (drums). The three of them formed the band Majesty with keyboardist Kevin Moore and vocalist Chris Collins, which would later become Dream Theater.
Though Dream Theater is his primary focus musically, he has appeared in a number of other projects through his career. His first non-Dream Theater venture was in the pop-prog band Platypus with Rod Morgenstein , Ty Tabor and ex-Dream Theater bandmate Derek Sherinian. He is also a member of Jelly Jam, which consists of the same line-up as Platypus, but without Sherinian.
Apart from his membership in these bands, he has appeared as a guest on numerous records (see Discography below).
Equipment
For Dream Theater's debut album When Dream and Day Unite, John played a Stingray 4-string bass. Since that time he has not used a 4-string as his primary bass, switching to 6-string before the recording of the Images and Words album.
Originally he played basses manufactured by the Tobias company, before switching to a very small manufacturer, Tung, for the Awake album. After that he started endorsing Yamaha instruments, and to this day they are his primary bass manufacturer. He currently has two signature models with Yamaha.
John also utilizes the Chapman Stick, a strange half-guitar-half-bass that has not been mastered by many musicians.
Technique
John is known as an extremely dedicated musician, tirelessly practicing whenever he has spare time. For this reason, he has become one of the more technically proficient bass guitarists in modern music. He plays with 3 fingers on his picking hand, and although he rarely plays slap bass he is quite well known for his tapping ability.
Discography
Videography
- Dream Theater - Images And Words: Live In Tokyo (1993)
- Dream Theater - 5 Years In A LIVEtime (1998)
- John Myung - Progressive Bass Concepts (1996)
- Dream Theater - Metropolis 2000: Scenes From New York (2001)
- Dream Theater - Live At Budokan (2004)
External links
