John Patitucci Interview

[Music] hi I'm Mitch Gallagher welcome to the Sweetwater minute we have a very special guest with us today this is John pata Tucci it's great to see you nice to see you you're in obviously playing bass yeah Ananas annoy project is that correct yeah absolutely tell us what's going on there well I've been back in New York now since about 96 but I only recently started playing with laws I met him a few years ago I started playing a few little gigs and and it was nice I you know I was impressed with his playing his writing and and then he mentioned more recently you know I want to do this record and I have some different rhythm sections involved but I want to have you and Vinny on and I was like wow great cuz Vinnie and I go way back to spend a lot of time together but since I moved down it back to New York in 96 we haven't played together much because we're on 3,000 miles away so and we haven't landed on the same tours so this has been amazing right it's incredible just to you know cuz it's like you sit down it's like so easy I mean he's you know it goes without saying he's one of the special ones and they were in the whole world in the history of the a lot of musics right you know right so that's beautiful and Brian share it this is playing organ and keys and he's real sensitive really cool player mm-hmm so we're having a blast that's great yeah it's great that's great so when you come in for a project like that I know you came in yesterday you were saying that you came in a started recording yesterday actually do you get the music in advance do you have charts how does it work when you show up for a session one you know it's different every time but us we did a couple of gigs at the bitter end and obviously Vinnie couldn't fly out for rehearsal gigs but right um he's kind of busy but you know I live in New York so I thought let's this is cool play at the bitter end you know I never this is the first couple of times I've played there my daughter's played there with her band uh-huh but I never played there until these last two times oh so it was kind of like a gig rehearsal right and we did we got together one time before that cuz he really likes to go through he likes to to work on stuff do you know everybody has different you know rituals writer making records some people you you know for years because as as venue isn't in LA I was in LA for years a session guy you just show up and they put the music in front of you and you got to interpret it and play it right right so I've done a whole lot of that as well but this is kind of fun you know you you play the music in a little bit and since it's kind of a groove you know kind of it has that kind of groovy almost 60 R&B thing mixed with a little modern stuff it's kind of fun right you know to get in there right alright a little different approach for Oz yeah yeah yeah he's done yeah and and for me I love that music I mean I I was born in 59 and so my generation was only really kind of the second and a half generation to play the electric bass I mean we have Jameson and all those guys and then right after them you could say Stanley and some guys and then there was us right I'm 59 now so right now I'm not 59 yeah wait a minute dating myself 59 at the end of this year right wait wait a minute don't drop the gun yeah really come on but anyway yeah so yeah it's really fun I enjoy it that's awesome and the sounds are really good here the the engineer is great the room feels great yeah the gear you know I had everything that I wanted you know and it was easy right yeah to be able to just sit down to make music so as I look back over your career obviously spanning everything from a lot of session work and just Korea the electric band acoustic band all the way up to Norah Jones and and everybody had tons and tons and tons of people in there I see some interesting parallels in your career one of those is jazz versus classical tell me how you're able to span both of those genres so effectively well you know I just loved a lot of music and what happened when I grew up I started off couldn't read music had it was an ear player playing only like rock and roll R&B soul me no soul music and then you know then got into jazz and then at 15 you know I started playing the electric bass when I was 10 before that I had a guitar that didn't feel good I'm lefty and I play righty and the pic wasn't very comfortable I wasn't very coordinated with that all right and my brother said he saw cuz he's a guitarist he figured it out and he put in a got it we there was a electric bass at Sears Telstar mmm-hmm hanging on the wall down the street on East 39th Street in Brooklyn where we were growing up so we got it for 10bux life and I started playing that thing and I fell in love with it my fingers you know it just felt great so then I played that for about five years and then you know after but in the mid 70s by that point we moved out to California and there was a you know we were gobs going to a high school that actually had a little music thing going and there was a Christie bass in the room so I started fooling around with that too because I had heard some jazz before that as well right so I kind of went from you know our be the blues funk music rock and roll like you know man the 60s was amazing Hendrix cream all that great music and I'm forgetting you know the WHO and the Beatles and the stones yeah I was into all of it and then but around that time even early on around eight years old I heard jazz rock it's my grandfather brought on these records heard all these guys are Blakey and you know Oscar Peterson and them hmm monk and is incredible so I already had kind of a schizo background and then when I went to college at that point my parents you know they had five kids so they couldn't afford to send us to a fancy music school or whatever so we went to state college and there was a the first place I went was San Francisco State and um you had to be a classical major okay there was no jazz major so you could play in the orchestra you do your Theory class and all that kind of stuff and you play in the jazz band but there was no like thing for it mm-hm so there I was studying classical music for the first time and I was 17 I was very young because I have a late birthday and it freaked me out actually because I felt like I had so much catching up to do so I practice my rear end off and then we moved to LA after that I was another two years in college and I left but all those three years I was a classical bass major my teachers all thought I was gonna be an orchestral guy which I love and but I didn't want to keep the sort of the guy kind of wanted me to give up everything and do right right I was like I'm out so and then I started going the road and then got into the studios and then when I was 25 I got the gig with chick and I've been playing with some jazz guys before they're like Joe Farrell and Victor Feldman and different people Larry Carlton mm-hmm then I got the gig with chicken my whole life changed right it was like all over the world you know all of a sudden he got me a record deal everything changed and and that's how I met Herbie and also Wayne who I've been playing the last 18 years with Wayne right but even more than that all told I started with him in around 86 87 right so it's kind of crazy absolutely I said kind of a miracle story from this kid in Brooklyn who didn't have any connections to the music world right you know a few people in the family had good ears and played a little bit but not you know mm-hmm I have an interesting story of my cousin who grew up across the street from me is pretty well known in the Celtic music circles his name is Tony DeMarco and he's a great fiddler and he's an Italian guy from Brooklyn he's one fiddling conference competitions in Ireland yeah right so there was something going on in our family but it was not known and it was it was not ever it was there was no predecessors so all of a sudden music happened to you right knows a few of us so that's great yeah Wow yeah so are there are there disciplines or approaches that you take from classical and apply to jazz or vice versa I think the thing that was great about my my studying of the double bass and I still play it a lot was the emphasis on sound and touch and beauty and an articulation and and it really applies the electric bass a lot cuz all the great players and the studio taught me a lot of things about this to note lengths how things make things feel rhythmically and how things groove is you know it's a combination of many things and how to art chelate on the basin and have expressive different touches right on the electric bass the difference between those guys that we admire so much that I grew up listening to was they had a touch they had a thing they they interpreted the music they were special you know they didn't just play every note the same they weren't chopping wood you know right even you know it doesn't matter the form mmm it could be something that on the surface looks simple but is actually profound like the Blues Brian or R&B music or or the way Paul McCartney's bass lines are on those Beatles records is profound really and actually his stuff you know it's very melodic it wanders around to her there was a I love the who - who's next was the record that my brother and I wore out right so and whistle had a different style he was from that British thing but his style was totally unlike Paul right now or then there was John John Paul Jones with Liz it you know I heard a lot of different guys right and because I became a studio guy I got really interested in a in a really broad swath and you know some of the guys that you know your average musician might not know about Joe Osborn mm-hm but the players do write or you know even though he was so important to the scene right or all those guys you know Muscle Shoals guys you know the the guys at Chess Records and all that stuff becomes very important right so if you sit down and actively study those players and those styles and those approaches I think because the time I grew up in and kind of washed over me and then I as I hung out with older guys that would hit me to certain records that I wasn't aware of right I discovered like duck done and because I was already the army guys already were really in my in my psyche like Jamerson willie weeks Chuck Rainey you know general Dermott those guys were massive influences at the beginning right still sure I mean I know Chuck now and I met Willie once and it was amazing for me big experiences I never really got to meet Jameson senior right so and that's just that end of it then there was the jazz guys and then the classical guy I mean I just I don't know what happened really it's just I I'm eclectic I like a lot of music right so and I was naive enough to think that I could learn all of it you know but now I know it takes a lifetime but at least at least I got into it all and I was able to function in many worlds mm-hmm but it's it's a dangerous game to play you could be jack of all trades and master of none so it's it's been a little bit of a juggling match you know like for me all my my whole career so far right right you mentioned sound you mentioned rhythm and when you're when you're giving interviews and when I read about lessons and things that you're giving those are the two things that come up versus pitch scales harmonic things it's always a sound and rhythm and one aspect of rhythm that you touched on very briefly there is controlling note length yeah when I listen to your playing you're you're very specific in the note likes to play when you're improvising and also when you're playing grooves and things talked a little bit about that and what that means to you and how you do that yeah I think you know interesting we had Anthony Jackson at Berkeley the other day I couldn't be there but I watched it they streamed it and and I asked a question you know even though I wasn't there I could kind of like call in and I'm one of the things that he was an influence on me as well and his note lengths were impeccable they were like to post you know what happened I think was from listening to all that groove music and listening to jazz music people like Ron Carter and Ray Brown whose note lengths were just so bouncy and great um a lot of it was 4years was kind of intuitive but then there was a certain point when I got in the studio world where I started really honing that and paying more attention to it because I you know you were faced with playbacks every day and you're realizing wait a minute that was too short and if I make this note a little shorter here the groove will bounce more if I if I play a little longer here it's gonna help this other section and write the articulation and then so that the length and the rhythm the rhythm is so it's everything because if you if you don't have great rhythm even if you have a great sound it matter mm-hmm even if you have a great pitch it won't matter now having said that none of those are optional rhythm sound and pitch especially if you play the wood base you can't make a career without pitch that's a big part of how you make a career in the studio's you have to play in tune all the time and that's where the classical stuff helped and even one when I moved back to New York I was really trying to push too another thing with it and I went and studied again for a couple of years and the guy really kicked my butt for two years this this guy who John Shaffer who's no longer with us who was a principal for New York Phil under Bernstein for a while and then he played New York's for years and he also taught at Julliard and everything but I'd studied with him privately right for a couple of years right and he helped my playing a lot cuz you know I've done these crossover things where I've kind of played concertos with orchestras and stuff and it's frightening and hair-raising you know you're used to playing in groups and and you're alone in the front and it's on you and and and you're not only I mean some of those some of the concerto this guy wrote from you had some improvising in the two but a lot of it was you got to play those notes and you got to make him sound beautiful and there's no room for error that was humbling but I was exciting and I think I grew a lot write it to me it's really what separates the sound of someone on your level of playing versus other players is that control that articulation that approach to building the groove using note length along with no placement and you don't think I think it's such an emotional thing too controlling like channeling all that energy and that motion in the feel into that time continuum that's that's what I think for young guys it's a difficult thing because I I've told my my students sometimes just because you have a great feel some people have a great feeling when they play but they're not able to kind of rope it in to a consistent flow of time they might make it feel good for a few bars and then you know crawl out of the pocket you know and I think we all have that at the beginning you know we have to even if we have a natural rhythmic feeling we have to learn how to make that happen consistently at a bunch of tempos right and that that's where the studio was a great teacher all of a sudden you'd be doing something for a song and the singer would say you know I really need that to be a little slower and it would go to three clicks maybe one click sometimes would change the whole feel mm-hmm right and you have to be able to wrap your head around that and adjust and say okay all right so that I I think it's a great teacher the studio is a great teacher every time I come into a studio I learn mm-hmm and I started doing demos and stuff in my teens for people so I mean you know that's a long time yeah right but but it's still you know it's like I tell my system marathon not a sprint you you're always learning if you're open to it if you're honest with yourself you'll see somewhere to grow right I think right right sure sure one of the other parallels that I noticed in your career is player versus composer you know a lot of both of those tell us a little about again straddling those two worlds you know for me um it started organically I think I've wrote a blues when I was about 12 or 13 and you know I'm sure it wasn't that great but um but I kind of remember the groove it was just like it was a straight groove and but it was like a rock and roll blues you know and and you know I went from there and then what happened was in my teens somewhere in the middle of high school I had a guy show me some voicings on the piano right and all of a sudden we had a piano in the house cuz my brother was already in college and he was a music major he got its degree in classical guitar even though he would like me he didn't study classical music until he went to college and he was a played soul you know soul full you know rhythm guitar rock and roll jazz and all of a sudden you got a degree in that so anyway he had to take class piano in college so we also we got a little spinet in the house and so I started fooling around that was a big door that opened right that's what opened the door of composition to me sitting at the piano finding sounds and coming up with little progressions melodies and then I started writing and I never stopped and then I started getting into orchestration it started to learn how to write for you know strings and you know Orchestra and different things and I just got fascinated by it and I was listening to so much music and and I've tried to you know that's a that's a sometimes I really feel like it's tough to manage at all like because you're trying to keep your plane moving forward you're trying to learn more about writing and orchestrating and it's like wow sometimes I feel like you know I'm being like pulled you know so yeah but I you know I managed to get some Commission's writing and so I feel like I am growing as a composer and I've had a chance to record a bunch of my stuff you know and yeah so I keep writing I have some commissions and that I'm doing and and various things I have a collaboration coming up maybe in 2019 with the Harlem string quartet they're phenomenal nice so I'm writing and trying to keep growing you sir sure do you find that one drives the other just composing Drive you're playing you're I think it makes your playing better yeah mm-hmm the only time it doesn't make your playing better is if you're not getting a chance to have the issue in your hand enough but the but the musicianship piece that composer that composing you know it things germinate and you get the cultivated you know as a composer you it helps your playing because there's a bass player you really have to have a composer's mind anyway because you're looking through the bottom from the bottom up through the music like a prism and you have to make choices that influence everything else that happens around you right so you have to make room for things and and you like I always tell my students figure out where in the bar you're gonna move mm-hmm because I came up when there was always tracking dates so rhythm guitar maybe - rhythm guitar keyboard player drums singer right so man if you don't have a sense of orchestration you're gonna mess everything up right right right that was actually a question I wanted to ask you about because you have worked a lot with piano players and obviously piano players will get down into the base register and as a basic jazz yes you do so how do you how do you avoid creating a conflict down there how do you allow room for both well a lot of them that I played with like you know when you when you talk about her being chick and McCoy Tyner also plays but he'll he'll do specific time so go with you if it's like an Austin I don't think you're doing together but he they know how to do it they orchestrate so beautifully that it doesn't get in the way because they know how to break things up make room for the base their master musicians so they they've figured it out and a lot of my I sense with most of them all of them really is its intuitive they don't have to think much about it I think because they are thinking you know composers and piano players they go hand in hand all the piano players that I will work with write beautiful music so they're thinking of the whole picture all the time right and they have to really cuz they they have the whole Orchestra under their hands so yeah I mean unless it's somebody who you know there's situations where you know if you play with a stride piano player like I never played too much with those kind of players they oftentimes they don't use a bass player right like our tatum used the bass player sometimes but he he didn't and I wish I had lived you know been living in that time where hear him play of life mm-hmm oh my gosh so that would be really hard to play bass like I think a read calendar play with him there's a couple guys that played with him and I often think about what what that must have been like cuz he was doing so much right that would be hard yeah cuz what where do you fit in yeah I mean he's doing everything you need me right yeah so the yet another parallel will of course is when we've kind of discussed a little bit here and that's electric bass versus a bright bass or acoustic yeah tell us about how the two of those relate as far as your plane goes well I think they inform each other definitely cuz I started out on this and I had to learn it first had a even though I was playing rock and roll and everything then I got into jazz and I had to learn how to swing on that first which was I was listening to so much acoustic to on records that I was really trying to grab all that inspiration there and then when I started playing would base it helped inform that and make it better right and then I think the groove playing and the different stylistic things that I was doing here help me bring that over here because in the studio's I did a fair amount of that too sometimes they would want a rootsy thing right where they want like a you know that old-style kind of that gray period that happened where RB records were made on acoustic bass and jamison played on some Motown Records in fact when we did the I was asked to do that James Jamerson standing in the shadows book which was an honor to be a part of that crew of people pay all the bass players that I listened to growing up were in that book and um they chose me to do this one thing that was called Mickey's monkey was an R&B tune that he played acoustic on em you know so that was kind of cool that I got to do that right and so it kind of that period is an interesting period or like Willie Dixon on those chest records he played wood bass mm-hmm and all those blues things you know so that can be really cool on the acoustic bass because there's no frets so you can make it sound like a dobro or like like a you know a slide guitar right so having that sensibility having listened to so many blues records from the electric stuff even though Willie Dixon was originally you know doing that stuff here and and the and you know the roots music was so acoustic mm-hmm you know the electric bass had a lot to say in blues bands it became the instrument of choice right Albert King BB King you know they all had what they called Fender bass players right right right interesting to me that more of them didn't move to a fretless electric bass given that they're coming from the acoustic with no frets I think maybe they enjoy the fact that they didn't have to work exactly so you obviously stay very busy I you mentioned you know the groups that you're playing with but two of the projects you've worked on recently that are continuing when it's children of the light yeah and the other one is Guitar Quartet yes and they're very different grew yes tell us about how you approached the well tell us about those two groups and how you approached each of those separate yeah well the the children of the light is a collective with Danilo Perez and myself and Brian Blade so that's born out of our 18 years now with Wayne Shorter's band and so they came along 18 years go and that's when things really took off for that band I mean you know I've been playing on and off in different bands with Wayne since 86 87 just here and there because I was doing still chicken different stuff but then I really made a commitment to Wayne's World and so the trio was an outgrowth of that and it was a place for us to also write and do because we have a lot of eclectic tastes - mm-hmm you know Bryan is a singer-songwriter and you know and I love that stuff too and and Danny Louis brings the whole world of Pan American music some South American credible he's like a musicologist so we access a lot of different things and it's it's been huge for us we love it and it's been well received - so we've been touring what touring again this year okay and and the electric guitar quartet has been very special because that record Brooklyn there was a video there was a documentary made and there was a thing that incidentally my my ex brother-in-law who lives in Indiana he was the one who kind of sparked that whole thing he said I want to do a documentary on your I said I don't think anybody wants to watch that and he said no I really want you to do it and I said oh man I said I'd like to make a record though he said well I'll give you money to make a record you can pay me back later and then let me do the documentary I said sold you know so we did it that way and it would worked out really cool that's exactly what we did and um you know I still you know I can't watch that you know I mean you know it's kind of weird I'm 58 years old I told him you know usually people make documentaries on people like Wayne right you know Myles is young and I don't know that I belong in that category but he said you know maybe it'll be an encouragement to young musicians that like man you came from out of nowhere and look what happened you know and so well maybe that's cool you know you have to encourage people and so I I like that it's about my family right you know that's cool not my dad and my sisters and my brother I have a big family you know right right and my my wife and my daughters and all that and that's cool I think that if that encourages people that you can also be a musician and have a fan mmm-hmm cuz you know there's a lot of myths about that right right you also got a lot of the amazing musicians you work with to appear in them yeah they were awfully sweet too yeah and I couldn't even scratch the surface there's a whole bunch of people that I would have liked long list yeah to have her you know interviewed sure so we had a narrow list there but it was it was it was neat that they were able to do that right so for those who don't know the album was Brooklyn and the documents back in Brooklyn yes don't check those out there yeah Adam Rogers and Steve Cardenas and Brian blade on the drums and in the times when Brian is not being able to do it we have made Smith who's also phenomenal drummer so we're playing at Carnegie Hall in April nice we're playing Zhang Kell the smaller the one that's better suited for electric music actually I played it the big one many times but that doesn't work as well for electric stuff so excited that I'm gonna play then quell all right it's fairly big to actually put it but it's more suited for the what we do and that that that's a blast because it harkens back to that music that I heard in Brooklyn the R&B music that make got me started and in the jazz and the mixture of all that in it right so it's a blast that band right I love playing with those guys right and and the trio children of light and and and that banner some of my you know and in terms of the things that apart from Wayne cuz the Wayne thing has been a game changer in my life I mean he's been like a second father and mentor in LA that's incredible right that's amazing you know right you mentioned Brian you mentioned Nate obviously you've worked with Dave Weckl and Vinny tell us how you relate as a bass player to different drummers because we're all very different drummers oh yeah and then there's all those guys I worked with in LA for those like Jim Keltner and jr. Robbins and there's like tons of people right yeah I think I wanted to be a drummer first I really did and my father would let me had bongos and I was banging around on them and I really wanted to play right and so I think if you want to really get into the bass you really have to have a heart of a drummer as well and now I do have a drum set now you know I practice a little bit but kind of busy with the bases but right who but yeah III think so if you love the drums then you understand the language that they speak and they play and you watch physically how each one of them represents the time mm-hmm they all have their different ways physically expressing the time they have different flow they have different placements and different things they do and I really love that that's exciting for me that the variety that they bring right it's phenomenal right that's awesome awesome so another thing that you're deeply invested in is teaching yeah and you've been involved behind some some interesting kind of initiatives at Berkeley and tell us a little about your approach to teaching and what you what you get out of that yeah I think teaching is a creative challenge that's even harder than playing music because you're trying to develop each student to the fullest of what they have and also to push them beyond that if you can and teach them how to have the self-awareness to teach themselves mm-hm and actually have the self motivation to do the work that's the hardest part so and a lot of times you're teaching them about life because you're teaching them about self-discipline what it means to work in a community and to make the community flourish not just your individual expression right so you're teaching them skills that are useful no matter what they do in life so if they change and they decide later on in life they don't want to do music anymore which I understand if they do I mean most of the students that I have are pretty into it mm-hmm I mean I I don't know what's gonna happen later down the road and some of them I'm very proud of they're doing very well out there right you know so I don't think they're gonna change their mind right but some people do mmm you know and I and I understand that it's not an easy life right so it but if they learn those skills of self-discipline and and and how to continue to search and grow and and do the work necessary for that and to put a community first over your individual thing I think you're gonna be function well in many kind of places in society right right you know and the Global Institute is amazing at Berkeley that Danilo Perez created that I teach at because it also we take the kids they play in nursing homes and and they go to third wheel places and serve and you know so they get a sense of you know being an artist is not just a self-obsessed thing right you can use music for social change you can you really you know use it for healing and it actually is a very powerful tool right if you're open to that mmm all right yeah right and I think it makes for a much richer life you know I have spiritual convictions tied to that but whether you think or feel like me it's that that's that doesn't matter I think anybody can get something out of when you reach out and you you know you're dealing with someone who doesn't have the chances you've had and you encourage them and you know I've been amazingly affected by some of the children that I've come into contact with that's great you know yeah yeah right that's great yeah right so one last question for you and we'll let you get back to your waiting for you the question I like to ask when I have someone on your level in here for an interview is who's work what's obviously so many amazing amazing musicians what is it that makes a great musician well I think the great musicians the sensitivity level is super high obviously the communication of it and the flow of that communication is very direct they're rhythmic thing which is the communicator is very strong so they can communicate all kinds of ideas whether they're whether they sing or play any of the instruments are the other instruments I could say because your voice is an instrument and I grew up singing too we all sang in our house so I feel like a great artist a great musician has to be able to have that level of self-expression but then have the ability to serve all the people around them and make right you know make the collective level rise by by making people feel comfortable and give them a place where they can really play better than they ever thought you know that bass playing is a lot about that sure so but musicianship the great musicians I know they have that ability to speak when they play even if they don't sing their speaking and there telling you stories you know right that's a really important thing I think that ability to communicate directly and to an audience to not just for themselves and for players but to actually reach out and touch people you know right that's that's massive I think and then and then I guess that what goes along with that is that that is that desire to keep working now on their music and their craft in their and their soul in the music and keep working on it forever right right it's interesting I asked that question and I've never had anyone say great technique or you know great music theory knowledge during those kind of things it's always those more ethereal if you will yeah kind of things that that are important in a great artist and I think where the technique comes in is is that if you don't have enough freedom on your instrument it gets frustrating emotionally mm-hmm that's where that comes in and sometimes knowing about how music is put together that will be frustrating too if you don't sure work on that so that may those come in but I don't think they ever function at any decent level until the rhythmic and the feel and the emotional and the communication things happening right they're just pieces of information until they're connected to all those other things they're kind of Givens you just have to have those yeah John thanks so much for sitting down with us today we appreciate you taking time to chat with us it's been awesome having you here and we're glad to have your Sweetwater as well that's fun I look forward to coming back great to see you Thank You Mitch thank you very much all right and thank you for joining me for the Sweetwater minute I'm Mitch Gallagher [Music] you

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Keywords: Sweetwater, Music Production, Audio Recording, bass player, interview, john patitucci, vinnie colaiuta, vinnie colaiuta interview, john patitucci 2018, vinnie colaiuta 2018, patitucci, patitucci john, john patitucci interview, colaiuta, oz noy, vinnie colaiuta 2019, chick corea interview, john patitucci 2019, #vinniecolaiuta, clarence penn, frank gambale, janek gwizdala, john patitucci bass, john patitucci electric guitar quartet

Id: fphUQwxncfY

Length: 35min 12sec (2112 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 14 2018