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Double Bass Pat Metheny...

#21
damonsmith said:
You are missing several points here. You are misunderstanding why no one into jazz likes KG - it is exactly because he takes no chances. All of us like varying degrees of liberties taken in the music but no one who likes jazz wants no liberties taken.
KG only takes liberties with his hair and his overdubs.

You are also missing why people respect PM. PM's solo here proves why even someone like me can barely listen to him respects him. He knows the music inside and out. He can play and his ideas are clear.
Playing dissonant notes doesn't mean he doesn't know the changes - there are dissonant note choices in every key. That solo isn't even free or avant garde, it is just advanced. I saw Ray Brown take just as dissonant a solo at concert before.

Also, Metheny had made his name probably before McBride and Redman had even started playing. He was playing with Redman's father, a far more serious musician than his son (who wouldn't have recorded with the Bad Plus) in the '80s.
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OK, it is an advanced solo. Just don't rate me negative when I decide to take the same route for one of my solos.

Otherwise it is you who is missing the point. I am talking about his attitude towards other musicians.

So what am I not getting here? There is quite a few people here completely disagreeing about my idea of what is right or wrong as I see.

So nobody will bash me for publicly stating that Michael Brecker made one of the worst music on the planet? And that he doesn't know how to phrase right? Because his sound surely isn't traditional.

But hey thats how I feel so I might as well just say it.

I just don't approve this. I am way too open musically (as in a genre wide sense) to actually even think of that. If you like someones music you like it, but you don't go around discrediting someone like he did.

So what am I getting wrong here?
 
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#23
damonsmith said:
The point is that it isn't random, he is making very specific note choices that have a specific relationship to the harmony and create a very specific effect.
Random wouldn't necessarily equal dissonance.
Some would say Chambers took chances with all those arco solos. He was on PLENTY of recordings where chances were taken.
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What specific note choices? Can you describe how they react to harmony?

Every of the 12 halftones "fits" to every single harmony there is. If the tone is not diatonic then it is out of the scale. Many call it tension. I tend to agree with that.

So if we move out of this melodic aspect of this solo and check the phrasing patterns. I would say that the articulation in his shred is at least awkward. But it is my personal point of view. And yes, I should keep it to myself.

That is not what Pat did on that interview though.
 
#24
Well here's the deal. I like Pat Metheny and am well aware of his rails against Kenny G. Thing is, i don't really care what his personal views are on other musicians. I like listening to his guitar playing at the end of the day. He's also far from the first musician to criticize smooth jazz. I don't care for it either.

As for jazz snobbery, it's usually relegated to a subset of jazz musicians themselves. At the end of the day, no one is forcing anyone to play a certain way. It's all just noise(opinions).
 
#25
Sparkl said:
Otherwise it is you who is missing the point. I am talking about his attitude towards other musicians....
So what am I getting wrong here?
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as i recall, pat did not call out kenny g until after the louis armstrong tampering incident. i can't recall other musicians pat has called out in such a sense, so your semantics (and thus your ire) are definitely off. otoh, pat has been quite complimentary of many other musicians, too many to take note of in a short post like this one.
 
#26
staccatogrowl said:
Pat
So as you issue the challenge, realize that Pat played and toured with Ornette Coleman. Look up Harmolodics just for fun. .

diyh.jpg


​


That clip is a nice gentle intro to Pat and Ornette.

PS remember that prior reference to Dewey? Maybe explore that with Ornette. .
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I know this stuff man. I am trying to steer people off from pure melodic point of view on his solo and check it from the rhythmical side.

Everybody always talks about the melody. Always forget the articulation and phrasing.
 
#27
Back to the actual recording of St. Thomas, with pat using the guitar with Montreaux written all over the neck. The solo seems like cacophony at first (noisy, annoying music), but I think he was trying to compose a dissonant solo. When I listen to it, it actually makes me laugh. It is a funny solo, because it alludes to the original head, but it's dissonant, and in parts, totally out there and off the wall. Consider listening to the original head a few times if you're not familiar with it, so you can sing it. Then listen to Metheny's solo. Do it a few times even if it hurts. SEe if you can appreciate it like I was able to eventually. It took me two listens before I got it. But I have played the song a million times so I know the head.
 
#28
I think any of us can hear the notes and the effect they have. The issue isn't the pitch names but the intent.
If he played sub divisions of three or four over the pseudo-Caribbean rhythm it would be pretty dull. The strong rhythmic choices also drive the solo. The great thing about a strong rhythm section like that is the possibility of playing against them as well as with them.
There are tons of other instances where his solos are too sugary and inside for me to stand, but this is a good one!
 
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#31
Metheny is not afraid to take chances. I was on a Blue Note Jazz cruise last week, and he performed with his four piece band. In the middle of is 1.5 hour performance, he took out the most innocent looking, polite looking acoustic guitar. When he played it, it was the most ditsorted, and frankly, annoying noise I had heard from him, even considering his song Scrap Metal. I watched him do it in two performances, with the same audience reaction twice...

He cleared out about 5% of the theatre, and people who remained, many were shaking their heads in disapproval. But then he returned to his normal sounds, and the people seemed appreciative.

Remember, these were hard core jazz lovers who had paid $3000 to be on the cruise for a week.

Later, Terry Blanchard came out, and with EVERY SONG, cleared out 10% of the audience. by the end, the place was 30% emptier than when he started.

So, these guys do take chances. In the name of innovation, they take risks, and you have to admire them for it. The problem was Terry Blanchard did it too long. It was the same annoying noises and sounds over and over again. Metheny only did it once, and got away with losing only 5% of the crowd who voted with their feet.

Here is Scrap Metal in case you are wondering....the song he played on the cruise was similar but really annoying in tone...

 
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#32
PauFerro said:
Metheny is not afraid to take chances. I was on a Blue Note Jazz cruise last week, and he performed with his four piece band. In the middle of is 1.5 hour performance, he took out the most innocent looking, polite looking acoustic guitar. When he played it, it was the most ditsorted, and frankly, annoying noise I had heard from him, even considering his song Scrap Metal. I watched him do it in two performances, with the same audience reaction twice...

He cleared out about 5% of the theatre, and people who remained, many were shaking their heads in disapproval. But then he returned to his normal sounds, and the people seemed appreciative.

Remember, these were hard core jazz lovers who had paid $3000 to be on the cruise for a week.

Later, Terry Blanchard came out, and with EVERY SONG, cleared out 10% of the audience. by the end, the place was 30% emptier than when he started.

So, these guys do take chances. In the name of innovation, they take risks, and you have to admire them for it. The problem was Terry Blanchard did it too long. It was the same annoying noises and sounds over and over again. Metheny only did it once, and got away with losing only 5% of the crowd who voted with their feet.

Here is Scrap Metal in case you are wondering....the song he played on the cruise was similar but really annoying in tone...

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Well this tune makes a hell of a lot more sense than that solo. The ideas are very clear in Scrap Metal. Sure it sounds like he had a date with Robert Fripp (who I ADORE), but it actually connects.

That st.thomas solo was just random stuff really.
 
#33
Sparkl said:
That st.thomas solo was just random shetuff really.
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That is not an intelligent statement and you will come to know differently with further study.
If it was random and he had used chance operations or the I Ching it would be far more interesting. There is a whole world of music out there and more and more ways to make a piece of music are being discovered all the time. This is a basic pro jazz solo with more dissonant choices than usual and he phrases against the rhythm.
 
#34
damonsmith said:
That is not an intelligent statement and you will come to know differently with further study.
If it was random and he had used chance operations or the I Ching it would be far more interesting. There is a whole world of music out there and more and more ways to make a piece of music are being discovered all the time. This is a basic pro jazz solo with more dissonant choices than usual and he phrases against the rhythm.
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So you agree with me that Metheny did not make an intelligent statement when he insulted Kenny G.

Look man, it is pretty simple. You either like a picasso picture or you decide to spend your time looking at the Mona Lisa. Either is valid and makes no sense to claim otherwise.

With time maybe taste changes. But I have my "music flow standards". And this certainly isn't one of them.
 
#36
Back when I was playing guitar, read all kinds of articles talking up Pat Metheny. So I was shopping at a used book store and saw Pat Metheny Zero Tolerance for Silence. Not knowing anything about the subject. Took it home, loaded up my CD, and pushed play...............
 
#37
I'm woefully under-educated in jazz harmony, but FWIW I like that Metheny solo in St. Thomas and don't have any trouble relating to it. It seems quite genuinely inventive, dips into "outside" territory in a way that suggests he knows just what he's doing and references the head in a playful, almost humourous manner. But then I don't have any trouble enjoying Ornette either, so maybe I'm just inclined that way.
 
#38
I like to use Rauschenberg's goat as an example:

The goat isn't random, he had to buy and work with it for a time now the goat stands on the painting. There is no denying that it is there and that Bob put it there for a reason. Another instance of a professional setting out to do a task and accomplishing that task solidly.
Taste and liking it is a whole other situation. The goat standing on the painting is a fact. Metheny carrying out a solo that builds tension to extreme dissonance and tense rhythmic ideas is also a fact.
The subtext of your comments is that he wanted to do a consonant solo and couldn't. He made a career out of sugary consonant work, so we can't make a case that he isn't able to work in that mode.
You not liking it does not change facts.

The only thing "random" is you trying to place unfounded motives on something you don't like or understand. The fact that I don't care about football doesn't make Tom Brady's Super Bowl plays "random".
 
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#39
What is the true point of this thread? Just to prove that Pat Metheny is a hypocrite for criticizing Kenny G for playing bad music, then playing a bad guitar solo himself? Seriously?

Also, was it really necessary to double post this in the bass guitar section as well?

And random playing doesn't exist. The human mind is hardly capable of truly random thought.
 
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