Double Bass Deciphering Pat Metheny's Comment

[PauFerro]

I was watching an interview of Pat Metheny a while back. He made this comment:

"When people ask me what scales I'm using it's a sign to me that they don't get it" (by "it" I think he meant improvisation).

I found this to be a mystical comment because chord-scale relationships are the foundation of playing inside. Some people can play entirely by ear, in which case I guess you can justify this comment that way, but I'm not convinced that's what he meant. Plus, I've read interviews where he talked about learning what notes not to play, which notes to play over certain chord progressions. He MUST understand chord-scale relationships to be the giant improviser that he is.

Any thoughts on what he meant, given the fact this was a passing comment and he gave no additional explanation?

 

[AGCurry]

Of course Metheny understands chord-scale relationships.

I suspect that he meant something like "I'm not thinking about scales and chords; in fact, I'm not really thinking at all. I am hearing notes in my head and playing them."

 

[Papageno]

There is so much more to improvisation than playing the "right" scales.

Asking Pat Metheny what scales he uses is like asking an author what verbs he uses.

 

[crd]

There is so much more to improvisation than playing the "right" scales.

Asking Pat Metheny what scales he uses is like asking an author what verbs he uses.

Or how the words are spelled...

 

[PauFerro]

One comment he made in another interview was that you have to learn all the scales and theory so you can forget it all. He also made a comment in another interview that he practices hard on his instrument so he can just "be". That made no sense to me at first, but now I realize that even in my own little corner of the jazz world, there are certain phrases and expressions that I just naturally play without thinking. In that sense I have practice so I can "be", as he put it. That may well be another angle on what he's getting at.

 

[AGCurry]

...you have to learn all the scales and theory so you can forget it all.

Yes, forget it all in the moment.

... there are certain phrases and expressions that I just naturally play without thinking. ...

Playing without thinking is, in a way, the goal, although there is a distinction between playing "certain phrases and expressions" without thinking and developing musical tics. For example, ghost notes into downbeats are great ... until they're used too often.

 

[CryingBass]

I don't think Pat means to say things the way people hear him saying them. It just comes out that way.

I have seen him maybe a dozen+ times over his long career. He is not, at heart, a jerk I think. For G's sake he played with Lyle Mays ( rip/sad ) almost the entire time. Can you find a single person who thinks Lyle made "overreaching comments"? They are laid-back true savants. As opposed to me.

Peace

 

[PauFerro]

I respect Pat for a number of reasons:

1. He has ideation and has expressed it to the fullest in instruments, equipment, music, the orchestration, innovation in theory.
2. Has the ability to create absolutely beautiful melodies.
3. Is articulate. Unlike me, he can express complex ideas verbally without saying "um".
4. He's been commercially successful by jazz standards (no pun intended).

 

[Wasnex]

I was watching an interview of Pat Metheny a while back. He made this comment:

"When people ask me what scales I'm using it's a sign to me that they don't get it" (by "it" I think he meant improvisation).

I found this to be a mystical comment because chord-scale relationships are the foundation of playing inside. Some people can play entirely by ear, in which case I guess you can justify this comment that way, but I'm not convinced that's what he meant. Plus, I've read interviews where he talked about learning what notes not to play, which notes to play over certain chord progressions. He MUST understand chord-scale relationships to be the giant improviser that he is.

Any thoughts on what he meant, given the fact this was a passing comment and he gave no additional explanation?

I think you need to keep in mind the level he plays at. He's going to get the same very basic questions every time he interacts with amateur musicians, and I can imagine it get's very tiresome trying to relate to mere mortals.

I believe the idea he expressed is to learn and practice scales until you don't need to think about them. Then at that point you stop worrying about the actual scale forms and just play. That does not mean you no longer think about scales, but it's on a different mental level.

As an example, my belief is that chord symbols eventually become archetypes that symbolically represent a large body of stored knowledge you have developed over the years. It's not so much that a chord symbol represents the chord, rather it provides access to a bunch of different ideas that can be played over the chord.

The way you think about the chords when you first start learning to play is very basic. Essentially you think of the specific notes and work things out as slowly as necessary to keep everything straight in your head. As you get more advanced and have played song in, you see a chord symbol and play rather intuitively from the symbol, using little to no conscious thought. You don't need to stop and think about the notes. You just read the symbol and decide to play one of many patterns you have committed to memory.

At a certain level, my guess is the same goes for scales and modes. For example, you could look at some music and analyze the function of the chords, then conclude that you could play any number of different scales. If you develop sufficiently, this is done with great ease. You see the chords and immediately know the functional analysis and what scales you can play over them.

Not everyone reaches this level. I certainly haven't and never will. But I have worked with a few rare talents that have.

 

[damonsmith]

A scale has 7 notes - that leaves 5 left over out of 12. The scale thing breaks down when you start to hear how each note can fit. If someone says a Lydian scale works over a GMaj7, what that means is that a #4 can fit in. The 4 remaining notes can be brought into context as well.
Also, Metheny is really into Ornette Coleman, which means melody is primary. He also has sort of a "radical consonance" thing happening, meaning he may be maintaining consonant harmonies without staying "in key".
I would describe him as being consonant without being "inside" as such.

 

[CryingBass]

I saw Pat play WITH Ornette. Song X tour. Kinda like Shakti, but not.

I pity kids these days...

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

A scale has 7 notes - that leaves 5 left over out of 12. The scale thing breaks down when you start to hear how each note can fit. If someone says a Lydian scale works over a GMaj7, what that means is that a #4 can fit in. The 4 remaining notes can be brought into context as well.

Agree. There’s also a hierarchy involved, but not one that can be proven to be absolute. A tonal center has 7 notes, and if any section of it is harmonized with a 7th chord, that means 4 chord tones and three notes in between them. I would posit that the most “inside” of those 3 choices will be either what’s already in the overall key center, what was most recently in the previous set of operative notes that the ear just heard, or some combination.

Once you have chosen the 3 notes in between, hopefully by ear, then it’s wise to understand their resolution tendencies. When I analyze transcribed solos for this, the most common resolutions are 6-5 and 4-3. The 9th more leans more heavily toward the root than the 3rd, but can go either way.

Beyond that, as regards the remaining 5 notes and their magnetic pull, Kenny Werner is fond of saying “there are no wrong notes, only awkward resolutions”. While it’s tempting to try to codify things - the two easiest ones are the resolution tendencies of #4-5 and b9-1 - it’s really a matter of the player hearing the gravity of the dissonance and then deciding what to do with that.

 

[JBarz]

it’s really a matter of the player hearing the gravity of the dissonance and then deciding what to do with that.

Such is life. Put it on a T-shirt!

 

[DoubleMIDI]

I once too thought to stay as close to the notes before or the overall tonic, but this is not always true.
A II-V-I gets the notes of the I and does not care about the chord before.
Also moving the whole chord up or down (what is called “Rückung” in German) keeps the interval structure. One example is the second part of Night and Day: going from Cmaj7 at the end of the first part to Ebmaj7 and back (and again) I would stay in the major scale. Eb Lydian would be possible too but I find staying in the major scale better.

It’s not always stay where you come from but also anticipate where you are going.

 

[yodedude2]

...
Also, Metheny is really into Ornette Coleman, ....

indeed. the o.p.'s quote, taken out of context, sounds like something metheny might have said around the time that "Song X" was originally released decades ago. metheny made mention of how playing/recording/composing with coleman helped him go beyond thinking in scales and chords and helping express the music he heard within himself ... i am paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it that i got.

 

[smeet]

In the early 1980s I saw Metheny with Miroslav Vitous, and i was blown away by his childlike enjoyment and playfulness of the sounds he could make. He was playing with a Synclavier synth system at the time and did some radically outside stuff. The most memorable thing was when he used a harmonica sound and perfectly replicated the sounds of a beginner badly trying to play the harmonica. He also swang his butt off. Amazing stuff.

 

[Martin Spure]

I dunno if this has been posted on the forum already, but I think this relatively recent interview sheds some light on Metheny’s thinking and approach:

 

[damonsmith]

It should be said that Song X is in Ornette's bottom 10 and not even one of Pat's best. There is strong playing, but it got pushed to the front by David Geffen's PR machine, not by merit.
Both Rejoicing and 80/81 are better examples of Pat embracing Ornette's ideas and you can even hear it on Bright Size Life.

 

[Bruce Calin]

In George Russell's Lydian Concept method he states essentially the same idea of "learn it and forget it". You have the knowledge but it informs your ideas and doesn't limit them. You play what you hear. It's a very liberating way of thinking and playing.

 

[damonsmith]

Rather than learn and forget, the idea is to internalize it. You are creating a faster path to the idea when you need it.