The Pat Metheny Interview

hey everybody i'm rick biatto my guest today is pat matheny i've been wanting to interview pat since the beginning of my channel pat it's a pleasure to see you now i want to say let's see i met you backstage on october 10th 1981 you're playing in ithaca new york i think it was called the strand theater with the group you were 26 years old back then and i was a sophomore in college i saw you play well many times with a group i saw you with charlie hayden and billy higgins at the village vanguard in 1984 which was a phenomenally great show i absolutely love your guitar playing you're a huge influence on me and i have many questions to ask you okay i'm very very happy to be here with you rick i mean your thing is really special very unique you're doing an incredible service to musicians to your listeners and followers it's you know i mean everybody i know is like following your thing because it's really interesting to look at music in this detailed way and um you're like in a very unique sort of position as a musician to understand so many aspects of it to then be able to explain a lot of things to a lot of people that uh maybe they hadn't thought of before and it's it's great so i'm very very happy to be here with you today cool thanks okay so we're gonna go back to december of 1975. i know you have a great memory pap when i interviewed gary burton he talked about making the dream so real record music of carla blay the two days i'm making a record because back then ecm records were two days i guess right and then jocko came over and bright size life was going to happen the next two days he said correct so jackal arrives that day and you're getting ready to do this and you're making this record your first solo record tell me about that what was it like what was the studio like give me the vibe well you know it's great that we're starting with gary because so many things for me are kind of really informed by the significance that gary had on my life first as a fan um you know the gary burton quartet of the late 60s as much as people talk about brew and stuff that happened a little bit in you know later in 69 70. you know back in 67 68 gary's band was kind of already pushing the edge of what was kind of going to be culturally uh finessable within the world of improvised music and um you know that band was like that was the beatles for me that band and um i had all their records followed it really closely along with everything else that i was following which was you know my early years around kansas city i was very lucky to play with great older musicians guys who could really play and most of that was kind of in the vernacular of the time you know playing organ trio type stuff and you know cti type stuff was very popular then and um you know so i was kind of hanging in that zone but gary's thing was something that totally definitely had nothing to do with what the kansas city thing was right but i love that stuff so um you know the dream gig for me would have been to be in gary burton quartet you know i mean that would have been like being asked to replace george harrison or something right you know and um that's what ended up happening very quickly yeah i was asked to perform on a festival in wichita kansas i got to play a couple tunes with gary got to know him and then a bunch of other stuff but very quickly i was in the gary burton quintat then quartet and um when i joined gary's band we made a record for ecm and the idea came up that maybe i would make a record which at the time i was 19 and for me that was like yeah let's do that tomorrow you know and um gary being the person that he is had i think felt like maybe he got pushed into making his own records a little too soon he started making records on his own i think when he was 16 or so yes really early and he to me was like you know you should wait until you can make the record that may be the only record you ever make because it might be and um you know also i was playing in his band every night he was a very tough leader in a good way there would be several hours of conversation after almost every night you're doing this you're not doing that you're doing this but then he would go out and not just him swallow too and moses would basically do everything he just said that i should do and of course they were right so in that year i really developed by being around them and gary's thing also was the material that i had at that time because i was submitting whatever i was writing to him he just felt like it was it was fine but it wasn't you know that one record though because i may only make one record yet and he kind of took it upon himself to let me bring tunes we he and i would do demos in his basement he told me that actually yeah yeah and um i remember when i wrote the tune bright size life took it over there he said okay now you've got the first tune on the record that's what you should be doing follow that thread because that i don't know what that is he said everything else you brought in i know what that is so that one that's that's something else and um the thing is for me too that tune crystallized something which was this idea of you've got to be able to play on the changes you got to be able to really deal with like coltrane stuff you got to be able to hang in all 12 keys on any standard you got to be able to do all that now that you can do that don't do that right [Laughter] and also there's nothing wrong with triads you know this is a subject that we're going to get to yeah and i love triads you know i'm like you know i like all the stuff but you know i really like just kind of hanging on d and why not why are we not doing that right so anyway that sort of set a set the table in a way but it's also got some kind of 12-tone stuff going on you know it's sort of i mean the basic arguments laid out eve on that record for sure but almost in that tune that's pretty much what i've been you know i still stand by that sure a lot of ways so anyway i had that tune and then the next thing was you know ecm you know that's jack de genette that's that's right dave holland that's yeah everybody these guys yeah it's like you know maybe i'm gonna do a record with those guys that was a possibility gary was like why would you want to use those guys when you've got this really great band with that that bass player you know that guy that you keep bringing up here um he's really good and i'm like you mean jocko because at that time nobody knew who he was or me or anybody you know yeah it's like yeah we had a band yes we used to do gigs in florida when i was living in florida and i was you know around there and we'd play with like female impersonators for a week on miami beach as the pit band you know and and he and i immediately became really good friends and when i started to you know i moved to boston to join gary and i was teaching at berkeley i was like come on up and i got this great drummer bob moses he's playing with gary you know let's play some trio gigs and then it became a regular thing and we started playing around so you guys would play around boston yeah we were a real band we were a real band okay and gary was like you ought to use your band they know your tunes and you know it's kind of an interesting sound with this bass player and everything i'm like yeah okay you're right so we then you know we went to you know like you said dream so real and i think we only had a day officially to record um jocko had never been to europe okay and i mean you know everybody wants to talk about jocko a lot i mean and there was a jocko version later yeah it was another jocko than the one that i yeah kind of knew in a way he was the only guy i ever met who was as straight as i was you know he had never been he'd never drunk or never drank or did anything sure right and we were like that he and i were like wow we're you know we got this thing he had never been to europe he was still you know jocko though yeah it wasn't like he was some other guy he was jock so he flew to europe and you know was really excited to be in europe and anybody who's ever international traveled knows there's this jet lag yeah so he stayed up the whole night the first night he was there while we're finishing dreams so real okay we're gonna have six hours the next day was he hanging in the studio with you guys no he was just walking around stuttgart okay because he's like in you know europe in germany and was just walking around which is what i did the first night i was in europe too sure so then it's the next day and i go knocking on his door and he's like out he's asleep of course i'm like we got to record man you know we had to be up in ludwigsburg which is you know a little bit outside of stuttgart you know in an hour to do this record he's like okay okay and he takes the shower and we go there and you know of course he doesn't have his acoustic 360 which was a big thing for him it's whatever the studio amp is which he was like oh man i don't know if i can get my sound you know and me too i i don't even know what i had but i had the 175 for sure so anyway we start recording and in a flash one or two takes and you're used to playing with with you guys were used to playing with these yeah we were a band we all knew the tunes yeah the only tune that we didn't know was the tune called i always called it b and g and it ended up being called midwestern night's dream because i had been messing around with a lot of odd tunings of 12 strings right and i had this thing and i thought this will be cool and then all you know also the other thing for me honestly was like wow we're in a studio maybe i can do an overdub i don't think i'd ever done it over back then you know that wasn't that common right in 1975 or whatever you know you didn't have home studios or anything you have to go rent a studio to do that i'm like okay so i'm going to play this thing on the 12 string and then i'm going to overdub on it i'm going to play a solo or something so we got as far as we got on that first day which was most of the record okay but it was agreed that we would come back the next day and finish and mix okay and gary was hanging out in the studio well the point of all this is gary was the producer of the record and the fact that he's not credited i think is really a shame because he was the guy he was he was there i mean the other guy was there too and certainly he's a very famous producer but gary in terms of what producers do yeah from beginning to end yeah reproduction and everything yeah i'm bringing him the tunes and working absolutely and also you know he's gary so yeah you know he's a great musician of course was he commenting on the takes as you guys were doing or were you just kind of rolling one after i don't remember much commenting other than sounds good let's do the next and me going can we do it one more time no sounds good and i mean i don't think there were more than two takes of anything wow so that led to the last thing we did which was this midwestern night stream thing which i tried to overdub a solo and it really even i knew it didn't work and then i was like you know i want to write a melody then so i went back and wrote this melody for jocko to play which is what happens on the end of the tune yeah um which you know i i still vividly remember writing it in the hotel room in stuttgart and then jocko coming up and playing it and you know that's what that's what that was so we did that over dub and also as far as i was concerned it was a disaster we had played lots of gigs and we didn't sound anything like what i was hearing coming back through the speakers at all right and you know that happens to musicians a lot of course in general yeah was you know i was pretty green then you know i had done a couple records with gary and a few little things here and there but i didn't really know what was going on all i knew is what what i heard was not at all what i thought we sounded like and besides that i thought i just sucked and um you know and i knew i particularly sucked because on brightside's life there was a big clam like i just messed it up and i was like can we do an edit because i had read about edits and they were like no no i'm like but this part it's like or can i punch in or something like that and if you listen closely you will hear that there's something funny i can't remember exactly where it is but i think i punched in and i had the tone control in a different place or something there's something very weird in the middle of bright side's life in the guitar department next thing i knew it was over and we're going you know like that was it okay let's talk a little bit about about the language of of your early music this language was really unique to just a small group of people and especially you where does this come from let's go first to just the um the the music part of it just just what that is i mean when people say triads over bass notes really mostly we're talking about inversions or if you're talking like a over b flat or something that's in you know things just another way of calling a seventh chord right something else yeah and and also i think very effectively giving a clue to the person that's going to play it how you might want it voiced and maybe more to the point you're bringing up of how you want it to function yeah because if you say b flat sus that's a little different than a flat over b flat right it's the same thing but it means something a little different yeah but i have to really always go to the tune falling grace yeah by steve's swallowing yeah which to me somehow opened the door to something yeah and i'm not quite sure i could place what that is exactly but it was to me that tune sort of started a way of thinking about harmony that was kind of not exactly linear in the sort of you know tin pan alley kind of way it was more like the the individual movements it could be the base note it could be the way a common tone cuts across more cords than usual yeah you know there were so many different angles you could look at that set of changes and i mean i still do i still can i mean i sometimes i'll just play falling grace in all 12 keys for five or six hours it's just infinities kind of represented there not to mention this particular compositional device that he got to in that tune where the tune wraps around on itself right so to me that tune was a breakthrough tune for many people yes i mean it just sets a it just sets a slightly different tone and i was certainly responding to that uh and and in particular because we were playing it every night you know that was like you know constantly the third tune in the set okay and um you know and not to mention that both swallow and gary would just eat it alive and swallow in particular his soloing style even on acoustic bass but then he really effectively brought it to electric is built on inversions yes i mean he's just constantly almost just spelling out chords with a few little things to connect them that's just like this incredible like buffet of how to think about harmony by really understanding how to invert the chords at least three sometimes four different ways using the seventh as a pivot point or whatever yeah um you know and it's just a beautiful incredibly eloquent and unbelievably communicative way to explain harmony to an audience and whether they know what they're getting or not they are getting a full dose of what those chords mean but it doesn't sound like jazz to people in that way this is what's different about this this is why i think it communicated to people differently than than jazz would than typical jazz even though it was improvisatory music it spoke to people differently because of the harmonic uh vocabulary that's being used well in my case um i've always felt like one of the most effective things about the guitar is getting like six people to sit around the campfire strumming chords i mean it's like first of all an incredibly great sound and it's one of the best possible you know ways to deploy the instrument into the world i mean you know it's just a fantastic use of the instrument that barely had been even looked at within the general vicinity of the kind of music we're talking about well if you look at new chautauqua or or it's for you that's on the uh asphalt wichita record you're actually strumming and then you play over strummed chords which you just never hear i mean you rarely hear it even since then yeah and i mean in particular the one i would point to is is 8081 to be a to be that doing that kind of rhythmic strumming that's right with a modern drummer like right yes that to me was like that was a kind of breakthrough moment i always wanted to get to that yeah where we could really do the kinds of things like you know elven type things but with strumming and all that yeah but at the same time even on 8081 it's a quite simple harmonic language it's more about this yeah and it's very hard for me even now to find people who can do that you know um even even people who you would think could do that eat like i'm talking about rock or popcorn sometimes it's like you know just get that risk like it should be rocking you know yeah but then i see some people who can really do it and i'm like yeah like that and in in this vicinity i mean there's a little bit of gabor zabo that kind of almost goes there but you know the main rhythm guitar function within our language has been more about kind of fitting in with the bass player you know and the drummer in a in a you know of course freddie green is the model but there's a tradition of that jim jim was amazing at that yep could really do that so to me that was really like fertile ground and then also the thing that you're referencing about having this staying kind of the same creating kind of a horizon but having the stuff going on under it changing and then maybe little bits of the horizon changing that was just an image thing for me from missouri right could be bluegrass could be country could be whatever that was but to me that always had a resonance that was very personal to me and yeah bright size life is that on missouri uncompromised you played just that little triad thing right at the end of the you know which is you don't you didn't hear too many triads prior no and not to mention that the entire blowing form which is a blues yeah is about major triads yes and um yeah that was you know that seemed like worthy um ways of creating some kind of exposition on what gary had um sort of you know like said okay you're on the right track with brightside's life that those seemed like good responses to that uh validation do you think that the jocko also on songs like that uh it was unlike anything that he played on other records it really was i felt like well yeah as a company he hadn't played on any of the other records yeah but even after that the way that he's playing behind you was was very was unlike the accompaniment that he would play on other records that that i thought it was really unique to that record there's a certain certain style that he played in well i mean you know the thing about me and jocko was that i think i may have been the only person that ever said that's great but and uh he wasn't used to that right you know even before anybody knew who he was you know he was like but i'm joking i'm like yeah that's great but you know what i'm kind of thinking is whatever yeah and the whatever in my case was don't play so many notes yeah and also these chords are kind of unusual this function of having a b flat over an a yeah it's like if you can show me that a little bit like you know give me something to work with there because it's just uh it's so interesting though what he would play on on that absolutely it was so i mean he was believe me man this guy the musicianship that this guy even at that point contained was staggering yeah on the other hand he didn't get much pushback from anybody yeah he did with me and i had a very specific thing in mind and moses would tell you the same thing we fight he and i uh you know i was equally stubborn about stuff and um i think actually that was a very strong part of our friendship which was quite deep um you know it changed at a different as our lives went wildly in different directions um but to the very end i was somebody he would call when stuff would get serious because he knew i would not him and also that my point of view was not too influenced by you know the stuff it was more about the thing and um so i would say that the way he played on that record a lot of it was because i was like [Laughter] and he was like you know i mean it was very a lot of uh a lot of negotiating going on like microsecond by microsecond too yeah in a really good way and then we had this pro with moses yeah who's like probably the most underrated musician yes i mean he's like hardcore new york drummer yeah and he was great for both of us and he was older than both of us he was like eight or nine years older than me six or seven years older than jocko and you know he would get in there too you know like he's got strong points he's probably more on jocko's side of a lot of stuff than mine right honestly um but he knew what i was talking about too okay so you sell 900 records of bright slice life right it was 800. then watercolors is the next year okay and that's 700. and then and then you had you had lyle and you had eberhard weber and you had on record and danny who continued for quite a quite a number of years actually after that yeah and you know i always say the drummer is the leader drummer's the leader of every band it doesn't matter whose name is on the marquee it's all about the drummer and uh you know so yeah danny so so but there was conceptually there was a change on watercolors well here you know the way that all kind of went down was um you know bright side's life did not sell particularly well it was not reviewed particularly well nobody really gave a about it too much to tell you the truth one way or the other right and um at the same time and i'm to this day extremely grateful that they gave me another chance to make another round yeah you know and because i had kind of done okay bringing in this completely unknown guy to play bass um you know they let me take another chance and bring in another completely unknown guy with lyle yep and and danny actually had done a couple record ecm records at that point and you know i had been around for a while at that point i mean it's funny you know that's 1977 by then you know i started playing with gary in 1974 yeah and um you know i think by then probably i had won a poll or two or something um and you know that's before i ever met lyle or any of that stuff um you know the the the thing of bringing lyle into watercolors was something that again i was grateful that they gave me the chance to do that he i just heard him not long before that maybe a year before that if even a year and had brought him to um i liked the way he played and i had a sense with lyle that's rare for me which is i like the way he plays and i can imagine how we would play together and i got that right away with him and um so i invited him out to do a gig in boston with uh swallow actually and danny and you know people ask me about that thing with lyle it's like how did you guys develop that thing i mean literally the first note of the first song that's what we sounded like and the other thing that was great is that uh lala's a good guitar player and i play i write everything on piano so we kind of understood that you know we weren't really thinking about guitar and piano we were thinking about music and um you know the whole issue of orchestration was a thing and still is a thing for me of like whatever the setting you can relate it to mahler you can relate it to to whatever you know it's the same thing the materials are different but the issue of texture and gravity and weight and size and scale those are all the same right and um you know that was something that was clearly on the same wavelength so there was that and um and then you know i had worked a lot with abrahart because you know he was on the first record i was on with gary yeah ring it was called yeah and he and i became kind of buddies he was you know quite a bit older i think he was even older than gary actually but he was a young spirit and we he and i and his wife he had never been to the states so we would hang out a lot when we'd go on tour and um you know i had played with jocko there's kind of an obvious connection somehow between jacqueline and the kind of yeah you know whatever that is and um so that seemed like a viable approach and um you know i didn't have the benefit in watercolors of gary hovering quite so much i probably should have uh he would have been he would have helped that record a little bit when you were playing tunes i mean how well do you even remember these things pat now you've written them like they're yesterday like they're yesterday okay i i figured that okay so so some of the different tunings and things there's a tune ice fire that's on there that's a 12 string i believe uh that's um are you improvising things like that or is that a worked out piece well so how much improvising was on that record a lot yeah yeah i mean you know to me the fundamental i mean for whatever my guitar player thing is which you know we'll certainly talk about my main thing is music and sort of right under that comes band leader who's going to write 90 of the notes right so then within that band leader thing my job is to try to create environments for things to happen and then invite people who are the best people i can get to help me realize those things and at the same time i'm kind of i mean it's it's a funny thing because i had a guy german jazz critics are great they say that they'll come right out and say the most direct thing and i had a guy say to me you know not that long ago maybe 10 years ago are you the last old guy or are you the first new guy and the thing is i bet you know what he means too right yeah of course i mean for me both well i don't know about i don't know i mean you know it's hard to be objective about your own thing but what i will say is that for me there was no option other than trying to invent stuff yeah and because i was around people who were doing it gary right invented an entirely new way to play an instrument that had been around for 30 40 years at that point jocko takes the frets off and there were frontless bases before but kind of he invented it you know yeah and that's what everybody did freddie hubbard did found a way to play the trump but you know that was what it was that was what you were supposed to do is come up with some new yeah and you know so for me it's like wow okay i'm starting to be able to play you know okay i better come up with some new though because otherwise you know that's what everybody's supposed to do right that changed around 1980 or so i don't know what happened where suddenly was like wow okay wait hold on pat you're jumping ahead now okay i am jumping ahead i want you to go back this i asked you about ice fire for example i'm getting there okay believe me i'm getting it it seems like i'm not but it's like one of the solos you're right right i'm like but i'm going to land in ice fire i know you i was almost there actually so i got to come up with some yeah i gotta i gotta i gotta add to this language in some ways and yes i can come up with triads over bass notes i just did that on bright sides life what else can i do yeah so i'm playing a lot of 12 string with gary yep and i had experimented with tunings and it's like okay this gets to a place but and this is really direct to your question you're kind of stuck in it it's like you come up with a tuning you really can't hang beyond what that tuning suggests unless you spend 10 years on that tuning the same way you did that that's right can i develop a whole new video because it's a whole new thing that's right so let me think of that as orchestration yeah i'm going to think of that it's not even an instrument it's like it's like an autoharp which is another instrument that i ended up using a lot it's like this is a sound and i'm going to think of it as a sound and i'm going to put that guitar on a stand which actually nobody had done at that point either that was kind of a big thing with the group early on yeah is that i went out and bought these you know things and sawed them together and got a welder to do your nashville tuned guitar on there and have your guitar behind you exactly right and then also right at that same time was you know with the guitar it's this guy and there's got his amp and it's kind of coming from here but the drums come from everywhere and the saxophones remember i need to spread the sound out and i just happened to meet a guy from a new company lexicon we've just come up with a device you might be interested in it's called a digital delay would you like to come see it so i go out to waltham right and i'm like you know they show me the thing yeah and i'm like could could i put this between two amps and that guy goes well we've never tried that sure so we hook it up and then i say could we put it between three amps with another one he's like yeah we could do that but we keep this one straight right and that's that sound but at first i only did it on faze dance the nashville guitar on my stand so i had this pedal where i would go to the stand i would hit this pedal it would get spread out all over the place and i mean the first time i did it like the janitors working in the place would everybody would just sleep what is that because it was just like nobody had ever heard anything like that before i mean now it's like you know you can't not hear it for better or for worse but um you know it was just this was very unique though even to this day it sounds unique kind of my point though is to me this was what was required yes like you got to come up with some stuff yeah so to ice fire yes where we where we're going with all this you got to come up with some stuff so it's like i've been playing this 12 string i'm thinking of it in an or you know kind of orchestral kind of way yeah but could i come up with a system where i could improvise with it yeah so what i did is i split it off i put all they're all e strings okay that was the thing so all these strings except for the very the twelfth string was a g string okay all the rest are this very close clustery things except for the top string so that i can improvise on that that's where the improvising comes in no wonder that was a like a 10 minute answer to it so yeah i could have just said yeah i tuned the bottom i'm going to edit all that out so i can get to the notes okay so that's why there are there where there is improvising in it but yet there's there's a part that is the the tune and then you are playing fill lines and things like that all through it and to me it's like with the exception of the recent album road to the sun yep and a few film scores my thing is i want to come up with settings for improvising really good improvisers and that are also settings that are challenging for me as an improviser so uh just i'm going to move ahead actually and ask you about another song that that um is on the white album okay this is your first matheny group album and it's this the song april wind that is in d minor now i've listened that song for years and i can't tell if that's a 12 string or a 12 string and an electric together is that two things i can't tell if it's two actual different parts played together i know that mostly what it is is the nashville strung guild okay guitar yeah which sort of simulates what a 12 string does but with a lot more um precision right like you can actually like really understand from a piano what's going on yes you're not stuck with these octaves yeah that is the fundamental thing about that song that would have been still at the point where going into the studio meant for me like maybe i can do an overdub and there certainly are you know those on that especially on that record i think i doubled some things but very few at that point still well there wasn't we still had to do it in two days right so always right that's gary told me uh you know up until a certain point it was all ecm records were done in two days period they all were for me except for you know the ones that i managed to do on my own with a lot of objections which was first circle by the way we're in the power station right now where pat has recorded many albums this room is where we recorded song x and i'll tell you about that if you can imagine that i cannot imagine that but um and many others uh you know in this room so yeah there are overdubs a few on that record um and i think that might be one of them so so once again as far as the language of that of a tune like that so it's a d minor tune and then there's one spot where you play this beautiful voicing and you have a b naturally you have the open b in there and and it's where you're changing from this minor d minor and then having that raised sixth sound in there that it grabs your ear and to me i didn't hear you could hear modal playing you know think of mccoy and and people like that and and but i didn't hear guitar players doing things at that time that would grab they grabbed my ear that were wow what is that wow that is that's beautiful that kind of modal interchange between d minor and you know d minor d dorian sound this was the thing that was so different about your playing harmonically without even talking about your linear thing which to me was was is unlike anyone and you've there's never been anyone that could imitate you your sense of melody and i want to talk about this what makes a great melody as an improviser why are you such i think you're one of the greatest single note improvisers or improvisers in general period ever wow thank you and uh real compliment well no you're you're appreciate that your sense of structure of how you structure your melodic ideas and how you develop your motifs is is unlike anyone else can you can you talk to me about your concept well you know melody of the three branches of musical government is the one that you can't go to college for four years on you can definitely go to college for four years on harmony yeah and you can definitely go to college for four years on rhythm melody your theory teacher's going to talk for 10 or 15 minutes about lyrical this and leap intervallic leaps that that does not begin to sort of explain why this works as a melody in a really great way and this other very melodious type idea does not and you know because it's something that i um am extremely aware of in all forms um to me you know i do think sometimes people use the word melody almost kind of as shorthand for pretty or memorable or singable or something like that to me you know the analogy i use is you can take a bunch of trash cans and knock them down a flight of stairs and you can transcribe that that's a melody and it may not be a good melody but there is melodic information there to be had and you can find musicians like for instance cecil taylor somebody i point to a lot who is incredibly effective at generating material that to me functions as melody in ways that have a very abstract relationship to the conventional sense of what a melody is on the other hand the idea of developing an idea to me may be a better way of thinking about what melody actually is that's to me is what you do so well is the way you develop idea after idea chorus after chorus well for me there's a lot of places to look for that i mean you know every music theory teacher uses the happy birthday one right yeah which i mean i'm constantly telling people that happy birthday if everybody would just play like happy birthday that's the idea a really great development and then a recapitulation if everything you played did that man people would love a lot of music that right now just goes over their head and me too because what i hear a lot is [Laughter] yeah i mean i can't follow that yeah and to me like ornette coleman a musician great musician yeah he was incapable of establishing something without like explaining it sure and lester young is a real model for me clifford brown is a model for me train is a model for me stan getz is is a more obvious example of this yeah drummers max roach man this guy would just take ideas and make them last for days and then of course for me wes montgomery everybody talks about octaves and the thumb all true all great what it is for me and i think the reason wes actually did connect in the way he did that yeah almost nobody else has ever done yeah is because everything he played led to the next thing which led to the next that's right in the next he i mean he could make stuff last for like 20 choruses right and that is like what's happening right now i mean if while we're talking and you i'm sure you've had interviewers like this where they start oh yeah hey did i did i show you this mic and um i'm gonna and oh yeah and that oh those are nice shoes man i mean that's what a lot of people sound like right and you know that's nobody can follow that and also if you were dealing with a human being like that you'd be like wow what's going on and to me it can be the most abstract thing but if that thing is there that's melody it's the way it goes together it's the way it flows it's the way it connects well the way an idea explores the territory that it suggests and to me that is kind of a matter of human consideration almost as much as it is a musical thing you want to be able to fo to to illuminate things and as as musicians what we want to do is try to illuminate the things that we think are cool like check this out you know look how this you know goes to the flat six there on that d minor like this is really cool i want you to notice this you know to me that kind of effort is is really just kind of like like if you were talking to somebody and you had something really like you really want to share this cool thing that you've experienced that you found to be really true like let me tell you about this it's that that's melody to me and how you do that could manifest in terms of intervals and this that and the other thing but it can also manifest in harmony and it can also manifest in rhythm and that's really interesting too is that they all work together with melody being this mystery figure in it well the the rhythmic ideas are the things that bind the the that create those phrases though it's the the the uh the the rhythms of these of these ideas of these motifs uh if i take a one of your solos like um uh going ahead that's off 8081 okay beautiful acoustic guitar solo that you play in that song absolutely beautiful over very simple chord changes for the most part you have a natural flow of creating tension and then resolving it putting spaces playing dynamically because all these things are taken into consideration that make your melody that make your playing so melodic regardless of what the chord progression is because you'll play over things that are very complex like the bridge on james that keeps modulating right so um that's a thing that most jazz players can't play i i mean i i've watched a lot of really good bebop players they cannot play and burn on the bridge of james they can't play over the bridge of james yeah i mean it's fun it's interesting how that works you know i mean one one thing i will say kind of is a little parentheses here i think a lot of people just listening to the tunes think they're way easier than they actually are and i think that's good you know i mean i've had that feeling myself like i've watched pat martino i go that doesn't seem that hard nope or paco like well like i think i could probably do so when you're playing over the bridge of james though it sounds easy because you're playing you're able to weave through that chord progression so so so effortlessly there's a song on um on travel song for bill bow is that how you say it the bridge it's just all major chords very hard now when i listened mike brecker loved to play over that and i did a video where i talked about his solo on his record versus your solo and what you played on the bridge i called the video like it's time for a major change it was the name of the video and so i basically broke down what you played on the bridge versus what he played on the bridge and i think that he felt the challenge of that because very few people mccoy plays on that i think and mccoy just he just played the course which was great it was great but he just played the changes every time it came around to the bridge yeah because i was like what's mccoy going to play on that he just played the game i was like yeah when in doubt just well imagine when it out good choice right you know but something like that you're able to just effortlessly weave this uh over this cord bracer what is like d flat e flat d uh i mean you have a lot of uh major triads moving by whole steps in different in a couple different patterns i believe and that's easy for you no it's not it's not easy it sounds easy for you it might sound easy but but it's extremely difficult to do though well i mean you use the term effortless no believe me i've spent like a lifetime trying to get to the point where i understand so that i can be you know to me it's like that it's like okay the stuff that i can't do that's what i want to work on i don't need to work on what i can do and most stuff i can't do so a bridge like that it's like i'm going to write something like that because i can't do that over years you know and hours and hours and hours of working on it i've kind of gotten to the point where i can do it and also it would be pretty hard for me not to do it now like i can do it because i can do it well it wasn't effortless well your idea is really hard on on the recording on travel is your idea flow on the bridge every time is phenomenal and that's one of my favorite solutions okay at all believe me that's one of my favorite solos of yours too the melodic development throughout that whole thing starts in the c7 sus then it goes down to the f sharp major 13. the juxtaposition of that in the in the a part and then the the the moving triads and the b part it's a very challenging song it's a very satisfying song when you're playing when you're the ear hears those things especially when you're killing it all your ideas are so well developed in that solo and on that you know you've touched on a couple things leading up to this that i'd just like to go back to sure a little bit one one is the you know we kind of we're starting on melodic development and and all that which is this is related to two and then you kind of got to rhythm yes the time thing is a thou as much as i can talk about melody and love to and explain its mystery to me and all that and as much as i love talking about whole you know major chords moving in whole steps and as much as a great feel if you can't play in great time i know that you can play anything if you have great feel jerry bergonzi when he plays he can play anything doesn't matter all wrong notes now it doesn't sound like they all sound like right notes because it feels so good right i think that's something universal to all music yeah it's got to feel good anybody that has great feel can play anything pretty much and lots of times i mean i have to say when i you know have the really it's a a privilege for me to hang out with young musicians and talk about music and then hear them play in almost every case the guy who wants to talk about playing outside and you know like chromatic this and all that stuff it's like great let's play some quarter notes like can you play you know a bunch of good quarter notes right you know and usually there's some work to be done there because if if you if that's not happening all that other stuff doesn't doesn't really do anything right and um you know our again our general area of music it's kind of easy in a way to focus on some of the superficial aspects of it because we can kind of talk about them and they're fun to talk about and there's magazines and all that and but the basic stuff is the basic stuff yeah and that doesn't ever really change and the most important thing you said it is feel like it's everything got some videos on that right yeah that's a feel is everything it's everything it's everything all the rest you can fill it in right and it doesn't matter you can play any notes if it feels good any notes work yeah my middle son jeff is an incredibly great guy he's an amazing guy he's one of my heroes in life and you know he's been around musicians his whole life and he's he could be a musician i think if he wanted to he's you know he's got other things on his mind but you know he's hung you know he's been around charlie hayden and christian and you know great steve rodby great bass players he doesn't even remember but he's been like on the floor next to charlie and stuff so he got interested in bass in high school got an acoustic bass he has like the feel and he's i'm like if you practiced like five minutes a day i could almost hire you don't even but he doesn't it's like you know but he's just kind of playing like i don't really know what notes on you know he kind of he actually is now trying to fill it in but it's like that thing that he can do it's like i can work with that right but i you know i've run across guys who can play all this stuff but it's like you know that feel thing isn't there and the feel is the thing well that's the thing going to charlie when when charlie's playing not only does charlie h charlie had incredible feel but charlie could make anyone nothing was ever really free with charlie playing because he would always play the right things under whatever ornette was playing whatever you were playing it didn't matter there was no free with charlie charlie's ear was so good and his feel was so good nothing like that nothing like it nothing like that who else could ever play basically the root and conjure up infinity charlie right he like owned infinity yeah you know and i mean you know he was my best friend yeah and you know i still don't know what that is he would just play and it'd be like you know the sky would explode well one of the best gigs that i ever saw i mentioned to you was was you at the village vanguard with charlie and billy higgins and and uh playing with them especially since they had such a connection um gave you a freedom to play that um was was i think really unique that was a unique i mean i saw you play with roy haynes and dave holland i saw you play with roy haynes and miroslav i saw you play with but this was very different those two together um [Music] i i felt your playing was was it was different in a way definitely and there's a there was just a different i don't want to see a deeper connection because i don't want to minimize the other two you know playing with any of these other great musicians but there was a connection between you guys that was captured in this particular gig i saw and and uh uh and i think it's that can the the your freedom to play what you're you know just anything over what what they're laying down well we loved each other we had a lot of fun that band and we toured a lot we did a lot of gigs around that period it's kind of a shame that the only real representation of it is the record that we made and you don't do what you don't like the right okay right it's okay okay so i have to disagree with you on this yeah okay it's okay we were a lot better than that you heard us you were amazing oh no the lot the the that gig was way better did they even sound the same no no that was no different yeah there's no comparison you know it just doesn't even i mean for what it is it's sort of okay but it doesn't represent what that band was no although lonely woman is a gr is it is is great on that like that that's great that was great story from a stranger that tune is a great tune that's one of my favorite tunes of yours and i love your solo on that is is incredible and the heart just the the structure of the song is be absolutely beautiful i guess more just us playing as a trio maybe okay maybe the straight ahead songs on there that's the stuff that i felt like it we didn't get to our thing and there are a lot of reasons why we didn't but uh i wish you had recorded this village vanguard game because that that would have that was yeah that band was you know not really represented that well for what it was and you know so that's billy who is one of the greatest people ever yeah and somebody that i just miss every day oh and that you have to change the card you want to stop it actually if it's five minutes let me finish this one and then then we'll be on the the same topic um and you know playing with billy was great and touring with billy and charlie was great because they should have had a comedy show those two i mean they had a 30-year history before you know that you know and it was just really funny to be around them but the thing with charlie and i was something i know i've never experienced anything like that and i think it was the same for him i mean you know we come from towns 50 60 miles apart we do have a 18 year old 18-year difference he was incredibly immature though so that's what maybe we were about right in a lot of ways um but we man on every level we just could connect and i mean you know there's a lot of overt examples of that but the one i always point to is on the josh redmond's record wish there are a couple tracks at the end of that which are from the vanguard where there's a point where charlie and i i think it's just us playing we're playing blues and that's the only known example that i know of on a record of what we did where we would just start going places yeah we would stay in the forum and we would just make up all new changes so it wasn't like the ornette thing it was this other thing yeah where we were playing changes and we would make up new changes all the time yeah and i've never experienced that with anybody it's and you know according to him i think with keith he had something sort of like that and and infinity more because their thing was unbelievable but it's it's a rare thing to be able to just start like okay we're going to take this form and we're just going to start messing with it but we're going to stay in it and um there was that and then also just the sound thing of charlie like we could just i mean we start to sound like one instrument you know when we would play whether it was electric or acoustic or whatever we just became this thing together that was you know and that's what a lot of the song x stuff was right you know it's like my one of my main motivations for song x is i just wanted to hear charlie and renee play together again because they hadn't played together for 10 years at that point and then i thought well i want to just kind of try to get in there so that i'm kind of with charlie like helping with that stuff so i want to move on to the kind of the white album when i refer to that for those of you that's the really the first pat matheny group album first official one uh phase dance which became a essentially this song that you would open up every show with for decades for decades right right when's the last time you played face dance bat i played a lot okay yeah i mean you know that was the tune i wrote for gary burton we used to we played the last year i was in gary's band and it was effective then do you ever go back and listen to any of these old records no and that seems to be a pretty typical thing amongst musicians right um [Music] you know it's not just records it's all of it i mean you know if you came to my house you wouldn't see any awards or any any remnant of anything you know to me it's like when something happens and make a record or this that or the other thing great i enjoy it move on the next day zero yeah because i've you know i've played so many gigs in my life where you know like okay you know last night in uh peoria i finally got it where i played it i played good on that great tonight we're in evanston or whatever and we're at zero so i work from zero every single but there have to be certain nights where you're like i was on oh right i mean that's one of the great puzzles though why okay so why well you know one thing i will say is i do know many musicians who were very talented guys and it was mostly about their talent and they got to a certain level and they kind of stay at that level and they're really great with me i don't think of it like that i mean i can say for 100 certain i'm 10 times the musician now that i was when i did bright sides life because i work at it constantly i'm always trying to answer well why why and i mean my research into this department has led me first of all to confirm the cliche about good luck is where preparation meets opportunity yeah so i lean heavily on the preparation department and i've had a lot of good fortune in my life i get to play gigs with really good players and i've been getting to do that since i was 14 or 15 years old so man that's like unbelievable and my thing is like okay i want to understand i want to know how music works i would especially want to know how the music that i really love works so that's been this continual process of trying to understand so with that comes playing a lot of gigs why did i play good in peoria and i sucked in evanston you know so i have come to understand a few things that are very particular to me i wouldn't recommend them to anybody else you know in my case i started out really young with musicians who were let's say indulgent in stuff i witnessed them at a young age get worse and worse and worse as the night went on yep that planted a seed well man i don't want to sound worse i want to sound better i'm not going to do that so i've never had a drink i've never tried drugs any of that i have no moral feeling about it one way or the other it's not for you for me i'm apathetic actually i don't really give a one way or the other yeah i do a little bit on the bandstand you can do whatever you want after the gig don't do it before the gig or during the game you know but other than that you know it's like we're here to play let's play if you're playing good cool whatever um so there's that and i have to say at this point 50 years now down the line that has some real benefits yeah you know i'm i can test make a testament that you know knowing many people my own age who had very different paths in that department some of them very close to me were not even on the planet anymore right um you know there's something to be said for that so there's that that doesn't necessarily add up to what i'm about to say though which is for me the the preparation aspect of it includes a lot of stuff about you know really knowing what the material is and that means like being able to play it in if not all 12 keys a lot of different keys being able to to to look at it from a lot of different angles being able to play it on the piano and in my case on the guitar or even you know whatever not just not play at all and just hear it yeah um all of that's a big part of it and definitely some nights you're more you have a larger capacity to do that than other nights so i found in my case i do better if i'm hungry so i never eat i don't eat anything from the time i get up in the morning until after the gig which has some downsides too but i play better if i'm hungry i'm sure you know um i keep notes every night i've been keeping notes since the charlie billy trio yeah i write about ten pages of notes every night about every two some people would say that's obsessive path okay and i would add to that the line between what i'm talking about here yeah in terms of musical output efficiency improvement and the line that goes down to mental illness is a very thin very thin line and i acknowledge that and everybody that knows me knows that that line is there right um steve rodby who is probably my number one teacher yeah i've learned more from him than anybody else about more things he described me one time which i think is a a good way to put it that i am compulsively productive and yes with maybe a little emphasis on the compulsion side of it but on the other hand um i in my compulsion is a i think reverence to balance you know i mean to me there's very little in music or in life that i've found does not require a really kind of um astute awareness of how things are feeling this way and i mean you know regarding we talked a little bit about fixing things in the studio and that option for me a lot of times fixing is messing it up you know i i'm like very aware of like that too it's like no you don't want it to be that you don't want that you want it to be real and for me whatever real is is of course absolutely subjective right and that includes you know all of the things that you know kind of get me to do the things that i do but again i would go where i started i know i can deal with music in a way that is much deeper now than i could at the beginning and i have to attribute that to this kind of attention uh you know and to me that's a big part of things too is just really paying attention to stuff and of course as musicians our framework for that is listening and to me that is the number one quality that must be there for all musicians regardless of if it's a four-piece rock band or a string quartet or whatever it's the way people live in each other's sounds and the way they are able to take it in and like negotiate with that that allows music to really do the thing that i think we're all hoping to do which is to kind of transcend this all to offer a window into that other stuff you know that we all have kind of this thing in the side of our vision somewhere that music offers us what do you attribute the success of the you know the beginning successes in the late 70s and through the through those records through the white album and then uh well obviously there's new chautauqua in 80 81 but then the asphalt wichita record and then the successive off-ramp and the and the different records after that uh travels obviously years and lyle's connection in the way that the music was orchestrated you had lights you basically were a rock band but you were playing improvised music with that was highly orchestrated too i mean there was a really it was a massive sound it was an overwhelming sound that connected with huge groups of people in big arenas or auditoriums things like that right what do you think the secret of that was well for me the conceptual foundation of what i wanted to have in a band was something that was connected to a certain degree with the music technology of that moment it was a transitional period where it was for the first time possible to deal with a lot of orchestrational type issues using synths that just were not possible before well things like like are you going with me for example you're playing with uh even before that yeah like when i left gary's band i had about i think it was five thousand dollars that i had saved and i took three thousand to buy the van right and um i took fifteen hundred to buy what had just been released the first oberheim four voice synth right which you know joe's we watched joe's avenue will struggle with on stage you know because you had to tune each oscillator by itself but it was like with that there could be pads basically sure yeah you have like good sounding chords right so with those things in hand with the synth thing emerging it just seemed like the right thing that was the right cast of characters to do that and um you know as far as why the success happened i mean honestly i have to say because we did every gig you could do for three years right in a van i mean we would drive from dallas to quebec city to seattle to you know and how much would you drive yourself i would drive almost all the time lyle and i were the two drivers um and you know we'd get danny i get no danny did some mark a little bit but no we i mean you know we put it was like i don't know almost 300 000 miles on that van in in a few years it continued on for another 10 years or so in our general operation but um no i mean we played literally you know 150 bucks sure will come and you know i mean i was barely paying anybody anything you know and those guys you know we were all 21 22. it was and we were on a mission from god too we really it was a band you know and we had a lot of fun you know it was a lot of work though i mean we really put on some miles but every gig we would play we would play two and a half three hours if there were six people there we would do that and then we'd come back the next time and there'd be 200 people and that's the way it works now too right you go out on the road and you play all those little gigs and you kick ass every single time especially if you're playing tunes that are 15 minutes long which we were right but it was like yeah at the end of the 15 minutes those six people would freak out you know and um you know it wasn't like we were trying to do to be successful we were just doing our thing you know and grateful to get a gig period you know i mean we did plenty yeah who was booking all these games was ted booking your gigs at the time well during the time that uh i joined gary's band gary had done a few gigs with a college student at um brandeis i think he went to brandeis and um ted was working as an agent at some other place and noticed that gary was in boston teaching at berkeley and ted said you know i can get you more concerts if you want and gary said sure and so ted started his own agency that was 1973. pat how do you tour with no cell phones or anything like that driving around in a van you stop you advance the gig you guys are humping your own there's no advancing going no you guys you just show up at the gigs well yeah i mean basically they would give me the contracts right and say you know get the hundred and fifty dollars from fridge at the end and you got and by the way you have to give three dollars to the union guy of course they still did that back then right and um and good luck you know and i would i was the tour manager the road manager the everything people they realize this stuff that that when they see you they're they don't know that all this stuff went into that well and particularly yeah i mean you know i think a lot of people don't know have have the slightest idea of what the bandleader thing that we've talked about a lot really is and for me for the first five years that included everything do you think pat that that the lack of success of a lot of jazz artists are because they were not in bands that that played like if i think about okay what are successful jazz groups miles davis quintet of the 50s miles davis quintet of the 60s weather report pat metheny group chickoria you know return to forever uh ma vishnu i mean they were gr there were bands that played together there were bands and they did a lot of gigs they did a lot of gigs and why is it the jazz players typically though uh they want to do gigs they want to play with whoever and they get want to get paid they don't want to be part of band they don't want to be part of groups and and really kind of develop like what you developed with your group with a vision of of your sense of this is what our music sounds like i mean i have some thoughts on that that are broken down by different generations um you know and that brings us back to the are you the last old guy or the first new guy in a lot of ways i this is another department i do feel like i'm the last old guy because yeah i mean you know i would never accept people coming on the bandstand with music right you know did you ever see the beatles reading charts no and i mean now it's like i go here so and so it's like they're all reading these weird sibelius charts that are kind of unplayable that's a real aesthetic thing that's cool it is a thing it's a big thing yeah you want it to be like a magic show sure you don't want people to to be involved in that stuff you know it's like an orchestra okay you know that's expected i mean we're we should be connected to the street folk music thing sure but we're dealing with you know a different kind of material yeah but it's of that yeah and it always was of that until 1980 yeah and in 1980 something happened we all know what it was instead of playing for your peers suddenly everybody started playing for their parents to me that was a problem i never played for my parents i'm you know they liked it sort of i was playing for my friends people my age and younger i didn't want to play for my parents and i didn't really care if my parents liked it or not you know suddenly in 1980 let's put suits and ties on and let's play some new original kind of stuff that's built on a lot of the shoulders of people who were in fact playing for their friends right and to me that's a key element in in our community still goes on to this day however i'm i'm honoring your question by acknowledging that there's a difference between you know my ban my vision and all that and anything else and i don't really i see it all as one thing so i don't necessarily think okay i'm gonna give some kind of exception or or special category to miles when to me miles is the epitome of musician and what i'm interested in is being a musician in that way which is to be able to offer as the great music does a window that's kind of like a mirror for people to see the best of what might be and to me that is something that tr is transcendent of anything and yeah i think our community of people gets to that more than anybody else actually it's the most effective um group of people at looking at music in this broad way because it's kind of a mandate now in the post keith post chick post gary burton world there have been these guys who can play ravel and can play mozart and can play shostakovich who can then destroy whatever musical materials you might give them and they can also play a ballot right and um you know that to me is a standard that was set with herbie wayne that's the standard now and you know i don't i've never looked at the guy next to me like maybe i'm i'm doing a little better than that guy i'm compared to bach man we all suck you know it's like i'm looking at wes or lester young or now you know chick you know i mean man there it is that's it that's a musician and to me i want to be a musician and kind of mandated within that realm is again understanding you have to understand how this works besides everything else really fun it's really satisfying to like go to bed it's like now you know i couldn't play this tune in that key before i went to bed and then i just worked on it for a while and now i can you know and what else does that open up because that always opens up ten other things so that to me is something that is not about a style of music or you know and it's also somewhat um immune to the moments in culture that we all find ourselves in because yeah kids now um that are beginning that have the same that same aspiration i just described are living in the face of a culture that actually is almost overtly hostile to that but it's always been hostile to them you know we've been talking about bright-sized life at the time really nobody noticed it at all 20 years later people started to talk about it it's the same and then 30 years or so later then it's like i was one of the 800 people that had it well you and there was the guy in australia i had a couple friends that had it yeah there was one i remember they listed the countries and there was one guy in australia and i thought wow maybe i can get his address and write him a letter but my point is like at that moment in time the culture had no interest in that at all and 20 years 30 years later it's in the smithsonian for blah blah blah or something which is great i mean thanks to that i mean that's really nice yeah that's great um but at the time it wasn't and you know this is something i say to young guys all the time because i've experienced it most of the people who are going to check your thing out are not born yet they're not they're not on the planet yet so do your best do what you know is good because that's the only thing you know is what you know is good don't worry about what somebody else thinks is good do what you know is good and if you do that i really feel like that there's the the chance that you might get to something but if you're chasing like what everybody else is doing you probably aren't okay so do you ever go back and listen to old records like keith jarrett records oh yeah i was listening to belonging yesterday okay and the song the wind up which i actually heard you play with the with the group back oh god it's early 80s or so great tune did you ever get to play with keith i never played with keith i mean i've kind of known him peripherally right from the beginning of when i started playing with gary because we would do concerts keith's quartet and the gary quartet we did a lot of shows together yeah because i mean gary played with them and then you play with dewey you play with charlie you play with i mean a lot of the people the kids played with no i mean i don't think keith is a big guitar fan right um you know i don't think he enjoyed his time with john mclaughlin that much for whatever reason um and you know that's man you know cool that's fine that's okay if i if i was him i'd probably you know i mean he's in his own category in every way to me that's the last guy i mean really the last guy where he's got his own music he's got his own that band the the american quartet to me that was the last great acoustic jazz group where like monks quartet or the miles quintet or the train quartet and you know nobody plays that music because it's too hard right and um and he's he doesn't make any effort whatsoever i don't think he particularly wants anybody to play his music to tell you the truth i think he's like well we played it already and anybody else is probably not going to be as good as that um but that book of tunes that he wrote between the american quartet and the you know scandinavian quartet to me that book of tunes as tunes yes before you i mean not even talking about him as a player right just as songs is the last great song book and chick yeah they're they're equal to me yeah um but maybe a little heavier on the keith's side for me just because those tunes are so amazing death in the flower oh yeah oh my god you know i mean there's a whole bunch of them yeah and also that band i mean was such an unlikely band in a lot of ways dewey you know i mean dewey is such an enigma you know it wasn't like brecker where he could have gotten somebody who could just play inside the changes in the most detailed way you know dewey was this other kind of player you know and that's a lesson too it's like you know don't cast a band in your image if you if you have another way to do it get people who are gonna you know think different that's that's a really good lesson right there one of my favorite solos of yours is the are you going with me on the travels record when you were recording that record did you record a bunch of different nights you know would you have five versions of it that you picked one how did you do that we recorded i we recorded a pretty good amount of gigs maybe 10 or 11 gigs okay and the goal was for me was to have it be mostly new music with some old stuff and that is what travels is yeah it's a little bit like the most recent records like that too yeah but yeah that particular version of are you going with me is from a very memorable night at a small club in philadelphia that i remember everything about it and why it was so good and uh it i agree that that's i mean that is really a great solo everything about it the energy of it the the the uh has a visceral nature to it i mean an intensity to it and the all the ideas once again you're developing everything kind of to its fullest level you know that tune are you going with me is an interesting one i mean i literally wrote it in the time it takes to play it it just came as one thing and um it was when i first got to sync levier very often sure everybody's experienced this you get a new piece of gear a new guitar knew something and it it somehow releases some ideas that you even once you have that instrument around for a while you don't get to that again right and that was that that's like you demoing the thing figuring out how it works and yeah came up with anything yeah well it was probably a little bit further down the road than that but close close to that and um yeah it was just and you know back then in that stage of the single viewer you couldn't edit it it was like whatever you played in that's what it was right you couldn't quantize anything you know you couldn't do anything except whatever you put in there but you could do 16 of them which was like wow you know like i think their their banner at the time was you'll never have to buy another synth again that was their their headline yes that's not true and the response was yeah because i'm broke after buying that one but um so yeah that kind of came as this one thing and you know it's funny because i still play that one i have the feeling i could play that tune 24 hours a day that is the tune for me it's like that's it it's a really great vehicle to improvise and it has i think what you're saying like when it goes that half diminished chord there it gives you that melodic interest then you go to the when it goes to the dominant chord at the very end right you can do something a little bit add that natural line on there or whatever and and uh and [Laughter] right and then it grant it grabs your ear there you go you know so those are the kind of the signposts in the in the progression yeah and i mean you know again i was really lucky to be around gary yeah who would really be quite critical of a carla blayton who's an amazing composer right right you know and like would kind of break it down like you know kind of from the auspices of being an improviser who's going to have to go out and play that tune 40 50 times yeah like what is that what what makes a robust uh platform to do that and that's something that i still measure things by it's like am i going to want to solo on this you know 100 times now right and i really checked myself on that because i've been wrong a few times and i've still had to play 90 solos beyond the point where i really want to right and because it's in the book and blah blah blah so now i'm quite brutal about it i mean i know that to get to some of that i'm going to write ten things and three of them are going to meet that and where i'm going to want to play it every night and not just one two i'm going to be able to find something to play on that every night and my real standard for that is monk is to me those tunes the the the main monk tunes that we all know and around midnight is especially a good example of this if somebody plays the right bass notes somebody sort of sings kind of the right melody monk is in the room it's a great tune and you can solo on that for the rest of your life that's right it is indestructible and there are a bunch of mung tunes like that yeah and you know chick's got more than a few of those yes he's the most recent example of people like people will be playing you know your everything and spain and you know his his 500 miles high people will be playing those tunes forever yeah and the reason why is you can pound on them you can do your jazz vocal version of it you can do your solo version of it you can write variations in a baroque style of it and it will be 500 miles high and it there's nothing you can do to stop it it is and you know the beatles they are the they're the perfect example that i mean you know we're talking about a few tunes i mean they did that for every tune on every record oh yeah pretty much well paul mccartney always would say that we had to remember them so they had to be memorable so we could remember them and that you know on the bandstand you know if you if we can't remember the lyrics no one else is going to remember the lyrics or the or the and that's what i'm talking about that robust yes like it it the tune actually becomes something even separate from you yeah it is and that's you know it's very hard to get to yeah okay so pat you have your guitar here um let's talk about james we're talking about the bridge to james now i use i always say that that major chords for jazz players playing over major chords that's like kryptonite for jazzers right and now james has has uh you know major chords has inverted major chords and dominant chords and things like that why is it so difficult to play over these kind of things and and you're incredibly good at doing this let's talk about the chord progression first for the bridge well the you know most of james is diatonic to to the key and i'm even the bridge if you were to play it in the key of c you'd still be on all white notes which is you know it just kind of came out that way um you know the idea of kind of pushing diatonic harmony just a step or two along the way is something that you know is interesting and fun and a lot of standard tunes do things like that too yeah um but where james has a sort of cultural connection is probably much more to literally james taylor who is who who i named the tune after actually um you know it's this very kind of diatonic thing meaning it's going to stay kind of within the basic chords that people know that are in the key of and it basically is that and why jazz guys have trouble with that is that the approach to it i think that a lot of people do is they kind of do pentatonic stuff yeah which is a you know it's a solution it you won't you won't offend your neighbors much and you also won't say too much about the chords you're going to be just kind of surviving and playing above it all yeah i mean the thing for me about playing tunes in general whether it's a simple diatonic-y kind of thing or a complicated set of changes is that to me the idea would be to show people the changes like check this out sure look how cool it is when this note changes to that note so um i'm always trying to find the places in the chords where the you know activity that's moving the chords along is happening and at the same time you know i think you've done talks about common tones being a really uh good um thing to look for so that you can connect ideas and all that so sort of a combination of those things is certainly at work but the key thing for me in any tune is to first of all be able to just kind of solo playing the notes in the chords right which is sort of the way the music developed for a good chunk of its history i mean you know there were major improvisers that were playing uh more in what we would call a vertical way yeah meaning up through the chords as opposed to going across the chords and the thing is if you can't really do that this thing is probably not going to be that deep you know it's going to be kind of a like i was saying you're going to be floating above it so the cords to the bridge are [Laughter] still we've all kind of been in the key of d yep and now we're going to set up a five to yet another part of the d diatonic world and then we're going to put kind of you know a set up chord that's going to give you the second thing and now we're back yes [Music] but describing those chords in well you're improvising that's the trick so tell me before we describe yeah so so literally the chords are a then f sharp seven and i'm putting in the g so it's got kind of a flat nine which is very typical to go to a minor chord now we're to b minor and then i'm gonna go to a again but this time in the first inversion over c sharp yep with the c sharp and then we're back to the tonic and now we're gonna go to the d flat but over f which is gonna lead us to that f sharp minor and then to e over g sharp and it's that first inversion and then we're at the v chord and that's kind of like an e minor inversion yep and then we're back to the tonic again that's like you know b minor and then i mean all of those you can kind of do a lot of different ways of looking at it i mean honestly when i play this tune now i don't even know what i'm playing it's like i'm like it's just the shapes of the chords that are moving around but um technically that's what it is so the step one for me would be then to be able to [Music] [Music] and then you know and then you're in back in the tune but being able to then and i'm only playing the roots the third you know the fundamental notes yep to then be able to go [Music] and just arpeggiating and i'm just yeah i'm doing is just playing the chords if somebody did that on a bandstand they would people go yeah sounds great and especially if you can do it in you know [Music] you know it's really very simple but it's very effective so then if you kind of you know you still have that idea but you're kind of like thinking of things that are going to outline it [Music] so [Music] all of that is just diatonic triads right and you know it sounds good and then you're like in the tune you're showing the tune you don't even need a bass player you know let alone a piano player you're you're illuminating what those chords are and that's the that's kind of the thing for me is to like isn't it cool how it goes to that d flat check this out and where that happens you know are these little lines that's right and i mean you can even this is the baseline which kind of says a lot right there so if you just take the baseline and add a note on top that's right [Music] just two notes so it's like understanding again that's the word that seems to keep coming up in our talk today understanding kind of opens the doors to things so you know in this case you know being able to just in a very simple way explain what makes stuff happen seems to work when you're practicing or warming up i know you have a pretty elaborate warm-up or at least you you do it before every gig right you said if you're gonna play happy birthday you're gonna warm up yeah what do you play well i do a lot of stuff kind of a little bit in this general area of just trying to kind of almost automatically make up things that i don't really have to think about too much right that are kind of related to you know what we've been talking about you know i just take an idea and let it follow its way through and then i'll pick up you know certain things and do it you know i'm not really thinking i'm just [Music] you know stuff like that you know really that kind of basic stuff and then you know just like taking that same idea and just doing like for instance i could even do [Music] this would be a good warm up there that's the bridge to james yeah [Music] that's too musical though [Laughter] i mean i really try i really try to do stuff warming up where i'm not engaged in it yeah it's just literally about getting them getting the hands in sync getting that muscle warmed up so that i can and i'm gotten so i can pretty much get to the point where the first note of music that i play is the first note of the first tune and that includes the sound check to me sound checks are really like uh sound activity that should be treated as a kind of you know something that needs to be done but i don't want i don't like jam sessions at soundcheck my thing is save it for the gig you know especially if you're going to do like 50 gigs you know i've seen so many bands they play for two hours in the sound check and then the gig isn't really that happening okay so just to back up on something so in your playing i noticed that in the early 80s you're um you played a lot of left-hand uh things and then your right hand really developed i mean it did i mean and and uh absolutely and i noticed you're playing it was like you could play anything then with your right hand whereas you were relying on i don't think i could yeah i mean you know it's kind of weird to say but when i made bright sides life i'd only been playing for four or five years so i really and i had really never been around like people who could really play right until mick goodrick yeah who was you know we became very tight and you know and i could watch somebody up close who could really play the instrument right i was like wow i'm really doing this all wrong so that was good and um you know i've really worked on it i still am working on fundamentals all the time okay so when you would be playing back you know when i first saw you play in the early 80s or late 70s whenever it was you'd always be turning up your 175. i was like what is he starting on one and you would always you know you would you actually have your volume down really low on the guitar so you have your pick up far away from the strings relatively and you would have the guitar knot up well to me the you know the there are reasons why guitar is not a first choice instrument in the general vicinity of this kind of music that to me are very pragmatic actually having to do with dynamics yeah like if you know a great saxophone player came in this room played his softest note and his loudest note you would have to hold your ears for his loudest note and the softest note would be like a pin drop which is that right and you know let alone a snare drum you know or a troubled dynamic range piano even even acoustic bass yeah i mean let's not talk about the amp let's talk about the guitar yeah this is the softest i can play and this is the loudest i can play compared to that saxophone player that's about this that's right so once you bring the amp into it if you have the amp up and you're playing like that i mean nobody can listen to that for more than two seconds right so the the breakthrough thing was i mean i could say jim hall but really all the really good players jimmy rainey you know billy bean ronnie singer got into this thing of having the volume at a point where they could actually let the amp increase the dynamic range right while you know a lot of the t-bone walker guys were really from the get as opposed to [Music] so you can which is what our saxophone guy is going to do for me i try never to play any two notes at the same volume i'm either getting louder or softer all the time even if it's a little bit because that makes it kind of do the kinds of things that first of all this music does but also it it's like when we're talking if i talk like this the entire interview this would be a very short interview you would not want you know it's just exactly the same thing you want there to be variety to get that variety you're going to want to keep your volume at a certain point so that the softest can be that and still be audible but you can get to that and so we're in answering your question when you're playing with a drummer he's going to be the loudest guy on the bandstand and he should be so you want to be in there with him maybe just a little bit kind of where a saxophone player would be and you know sometimes you are sometimes you're not and that's why i'm st to this day i'm always trying to get to the point where i can get the most dynamics and still be in there because the thing is if you're too if you're up too loud and you're still not loud enough then you're going to start picking harder right you're going to have less dynamics and it's going to sound crappy so will your vi will your volume tone be on halfway or something do you where do you usually start yeah about halfway halfway or or just a little above halfway okay so that i have some headroom um you know the the question of where to pick up sound their best is one that i think is variable depending on what kind of pickup it is yep um and which guitar yeah what the guitar sounds like acoustic all those x factors i mean for sure if you've if you're if you're at eight nine or ten all the time you're probably not going to be a very dynamic player um and since dynamics are such an essential part of music for me that's a priority and um you know jim was amazing at this jim hall jim yeah yeah jim really found a a wage that actually even incorporated the actual acoustic guitar right i mean he couldn't act get to that every time depending upon the setting but in a lot of in a lot of settings he did he did just go totally acoustic and then his his probably normal playing volume was probably somewhere around and maybe a little bit more than that [Music] one other thing i want to ask you about pat is like playing a particular note like when i hear people try to imitate you they'll slide into things right and they'll do things and and i was always laughing about this like that doesn't sound anything like pat he doesn't like when you go into there's many ways that you can play into a note you can slide into it you can hammer into it you can do a gliss into it and you incorporate all these different things it kind of goes along with your dynamics too well and kind of oddly all of this centers around time yeah which is however you get to a note it's when you get to the note that is really the thing right and in my case i spend a lot of time thinking about where in the beat it's going to fall because i like to play paul chambers sam jones right in the middle yep and i like to play be i mean if we had a click track i could demonstrate it better but i like to play behind yep and i like to play right on top and sometimes within a phrase all of those things but i'm kind of aware of it the same way i would be aware of if i'm going to go like i could hit that that way i could hit that with a and each of those has a very different meaning and a different kind of philosophy about how it's going to either resolve to the next idea or whether it's going to be a continuation of how it proceeded but whatever it is it's got to feel good right and to me that's mostly about like when i do get the chance to meet with students first thing we do is i'm i just want to hear everybody play quarter notes especially if you get a room full of guys it's like it's you know it's like a flaming you know it's like we gotta all agree in quarter notes and it's funny how once people concentrate on it sure then like the room suddenly coagulates into one thing but it kind of points to how you know often and i don't know why it is maybe it's something about the guitar where we have to coordinate two things at once yeah it's it doesn't seem to rise to the top level of priority the way with you if you're playing trumpet or saxophone you don't have any choice because it's going to happen and even piano it's like where that is is where it is here there's a little wiggle room somehow between the the two hands but the result must do the thing you know you know i i once asked mcgoodrick i said mick why is the guitar so hard to play he's like because this sounds like a big thing because you can find the same note in 2.8 places like ever and i was like that is the ultimate right that's him i had one for him which i gave him the other day which he still he appreciated i said if you take your guitar out into the forest and you play really bad and there's nobody there to hear you do you still suck yeah yeah you do well he said he said i got to think about it [Laughter] 2.8 places i'm like what yeah only they said you guys look you play c here at the 15th fret you can play c here you can play c here see here see here and that's just the note c but if you average all the notes on the guitar together it's like 2.8 places that's why guitar is so hard to read on i was like yeah that's actually true right on yeah so pat it was such a pleasure pleasure rick such a pleasure inviting me thanks to all of your wonderful uh followers and you know this is really cool to be a part of this and um you know i really enjoyed every second of talking to you thank you thank you so much i'd like to once again thank pat for being my guest and also thank the power station which is now part of berkeley college music for hosting us stephen weber there and my dear friend roger brown who made it happen if you're not a subscriber to the channel think about subscribing and if you want to make a donation to the channel i'll put a link in the description below this will help make more interviews like this possible in the future thanks so much for watching

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 255,952

Rating: 4.9816637 out of 5

Keywords: rick beato, everything music, rick, beato, music, music theory, music production, education, pat metheny, lyle mays, antonio sanchez, pat metheny group, pat metheny are you going with me, pat metheny first circle, pat metheny bright size life, jaco pastorius, gary burton, keith jarrett, Jazz, virtuoso, guitar, guitar playing, pat metheny james, As falls, as falls wichita so falls wichita falls, Jojo part 3 credits song, jojos bizarre adventure, Stardust Crusaders, Last Train Home

Id: QEgalcH_-b4

Length: 106min 56sec (6416 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 19 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/29kw]

I hope Rick keeps doing these interviews. This and the one he did with Ron Carter recently are such valuable resources for musicians and jazz historians. It's like he just knows how to ask the perfect questions.

[u/PJ_jazz68]

I used to think Rick was annoying af, but I've changed my mind, this is fantastic... I once had the pleasure of meeting Pat, and his memory IS incredible, he remembered a gig I saw him at in detail from 1985... a great guy to talk to, and in this interview he really makes some great points

[u/cubistguitar]

I just wanna know about the Ibanez guitar with the Charlie Christian pickup!!

[u/haptiK]

ric beato is legit. his videos are phenomenal

[u/BumAndBummer]

He definitely has his pretentious, holier-than-thou takes on things, but if you look beyond the moments of ego, Rick seems to be a sweet and kind man at heart.

When it comes to his channel, I think he is at his best when he interviews people! Probably in large part because he tends to chat with people he respects and whose work he knows well. So many music journalists ask the same insipid, superficial questions, or try to get salacious answers that they can turn into clickbait. But Rick being Rick, he is not only able to build trust and chemistry with his guests, but has a much more interesting set of questions.

[u/kannilainen]

Yeah here's the thing: Whatever you think about Rick Beato, this is the best someone's ever gotten Pat Metheny to talk about down to earth practical things about playing the guitar and making his music. Prove me wrong, PLEASE.

Edit: I was glued to the screen during the interview and then when he picked up his guitar I started masturbating furiously.

[u/dubeskin]

I'm so glad Rick did this interview because I'd never given Metheny attention among the jazz greats. But, since watching this a couple days ago, I've started going down the Metheny rabbit hole and every record I'm discovering feels like Christmas morning; unwrapping a new present different from the last.

[u/ATribeCalledQueso]

Rick is an asshole cherry picking boomer but sometimes he can be okay

[u/alichoturqo]

Oh wow! God I adore Rick Beato. I mean I understand maybe 20% of what he’s talking about, but what little I have understood has been amazing and has made me a better musician.