John Myung

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. His soft-spoken nature has added a bit of a mystique to his character.

Apart from his membership in these bands, he has appeared as a guest on numerous records.

For Dream Theater's debut album When Dream and Day Unite, John played a Stingray 4-string bass. John Myung used various basses for the recording of Images and Words, including a 4-string Spector bass, but for the tour he switched out his 4-string basses for a 6-string bass. He originally played basses manufactured by the Tobias company. He switched to instruments made by a very small manufacturer, Tung, for the Awake album. Afterwards, John began endorsing Yamaha instruments. They remain 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 (one of them is session veteran and current King Crimson bassist Tony Levin, also a member of Liquid Tension Experiment.)

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.

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