Well, I can understand why a lot of people say they don't like jazz, because right now sometimes you say the word "jazz" and people think of some of the worst music on earth like for instance Kenny G. I mean, you know, there's nothing more stupid than that. Let's say so. That's the damnedest music there ever could possibly be in the history of human being. There could never be music any worse than that. And now people think that that's what jazz is. Well, that's not what jazz is AT ALL. Jazz is at its best the most incredible music. It's just that like in rock & roll, 95 percent of it really sucks. It's just the really good stuff that's really great, and that's exactly the same with pop music. It's just like that in jazz, it's just that it takes a little bit longer to discover the good stuff in jazz, because you're going to the record store and there's so many records that you don't even know where to begin. You could find somebody that'd help you to learn about jazz, somebody who knows about it.
Probably one of the most important records in the group's history is a record "Still Life (Talking)," which we recorded in 1987. It's significant on a whole bunch of levels. First of all, it was the first group record after I left ECM. Being on a record label other than ECM just opened up a world of possibilities that we simply didn't have at ECM, not to say anything against the way we did at ECM or against ECM at all. The way their whole thing was structured at ECM was that you recorded for 2 days, you mixed for a day, that was your record. For better or for worse it came out, whether you liked it or not, that was your record.
This was the first time that we had the chance to spend more time in the studio. We didn't spend that much time, but it was like 10 times as much time as we -- actually was about 10 times as much time as we spent with ECM. I mean, I think we spent 2 weeks in the studio. It was a chance to kind of explorer the idea of using the studio as an instrument, and by that I mean we took our time to get the details right. We allowed the possibility of doing something a whole bunch of times rather than just 3 or 4 times.
The music that we wrote seemed to really be well suited to that type of recording procedure. And it was thrilling to be able to let the band sort of settle into this more microscopic way of making records.
Along those lines, Steve Rodoby’s presence as a producer sort of began to emerge into the very prominent way that it's figured into the later group records. Steve brought to the table, you know, an incredible wealth of recording studio experience that, honestly, none of the rest of us had. Steve had spent, you know, 10 or 15 years in the studios of Chicago, doing every record date and in particular every jingle that there was. That may seem like a far removed connection to making a jazz record, but -- talking about jingles in particular -- but, you know, in many ways, getting good performances out of a recording situation and a recording environment is sort of separate from the style that it's recorded. And, Steve is very, very good at sort of allowing people to do their best work in a recording studio. And his presence was huge in terms of the way that that record came out and the way it was made.
And also along the same lines, Rob Eaton, who had been an assistant engineer on "First Circle" and had been very involved in the making of "Song X," sort of got the call to be our main recording engineer. He was a young, very enthusiastic and brilliant ally for us in the studio and in fact remains there to this day, has recorded every group record since and is our first call guy for everything having to do with sound. His imprint on the band's sound and development is huge on "Still Life" and, I like to say, continues through every record since.
With the record "First Circle," I finally felt like the group was what I'd hoped it might be someday. Kind of leading up to "First Circle," I know lots of people love the records that preceded that. But I almost felt like the band had not quite got into the -- just general level, that, you know -- I felt like I had experienced, you know, like, say in Gary Burton's band. There was a sort of sense of just development that I just was missing somehow in the earlier group that -- with "First Circle," it was like "Okay, now this is something that I really feel like the conception part of it is there, the execution part of it is there, we've got the right band for this and we can kind of go anywhere now, and we can really follow this through to its natural places."
The fundamental idea of having a vocal element in the band that's sort of -- was not like another front line instrument with the guitar but was sort of just another place we can go to for melodic information, textural information and that there could be people in the band who are not necessarily functioning as soloists but more like ensemble players was something that have been developed on "First Circle" with the addition of Pedro Aznar but was taking much further with "Still Life (Talking)" with two musicians, David Blamires and Mark Redford, who sadly is not with us now. He -- we're very sad about his passing, but both of them were kind of these super musicians who could sing incredibly well, could play guitars, could play brass instruments, could play percussion. They could do all this stuff. And suddenly, that idea of sort of ensemble became something that we could really go at to add to the mix.
I had been living in Brazil during that period. We had one great Brazilian percussionist in the band prior to that, Nana Vasconcelos, who joined us on "Wichita ..." and, later, "Offramp." And while I was in Brazil, I was like "Well, you know, I want to get another percussionist. I'm just going to have open auditions." And I auditioned, I think, 50 or 60 people. It was just kind of like the call was out that there was this gig to be had from this, you know, American jazz guy, and everybody came, brought their instruments, and it was a really fun 2 days. But there was one guy who was just light-years beyond everyone else. There was not even any close comparison. And that was Armando Marcal, who I was really happy to welcome into the band. And he played with us for a few years after that. And he was a great spirit to have in the group. He's just a very positive, very wonderful human being to be around day-in and day-out who brought something very special to the music, too, which was that flavor. And we had incredible experiences with that band doing all kinds of things together musically that I think none of us had done quite like that before.
Pieces on that record are, I guess, notable for the way they kind of hung together. I mean, that's one thing that people comment on a lot about that record, is how from sort of beginning to end it really does the thing, which is something we've always worked on and certainly continue to work on in records that follow that. We were pretty happy when we found we got the sequence of that record and listened to the whole thing as a piece after we got over the fact that it, you know, was quite different sounding than any records that we had made and, in our opinion, was more reflective of what the band really sounded like then. You know, it's funny how the tunes on that record have really held up. There's tunes on there that I still play regularly. And I still find a million things to do on them. Two songs on that record, "Last Train Home" and "So May It Secretly Begin", are pieces that I can still play, you know, kind of any time and any context with any band with any musicians. And they just are tunes that are fun to play that kind of have that durability that's very rare. They're pieces that seem to do what they need to do regardless of the context that they're presented in. To me, that's always a goal in a way to try to come up with melodic information that has that kind of bulletproof quality that to me the best music usually has.
There were a few things in terms of the collaborative writing that Lyle and I did on that record that were significantly ambitious. There was the scale and the scope of both "Third Wind" and "Six-Eight" -- "Minuano" that were kind of a continuation of what we had started with "First Circle" but, I would say, a couple degrees further down the road in terms of the techniques that were used in some of the specific elements of like using marimbas, having that kind of metric modulation that you find in "Third Wind" were moving from section to section. That's sort of -- is a way that's just a different kind of approach to things that we had done prior to that. And there's a couple aspects, I guess, of that period of time in terms of just the sound of the instruments that was unique. I mean, when I listen to it now, I mean, I remember the time I did the whole record with a mic on the guitar which is something that I hadn't really done before that gives that kind of more intimate kind of sound you can really hear a lot of scratching and, you know, kind of more human kinds of elements to -- built in with the complexity of the electric sound. And that's sort of goes-across-the-board. I mean, we spent a lot more time on the base sound, you know, just trying to get the details of the music a little bit more specific. Ultimately, it's probably one of the favorite records for us. From the people that follow the band -- I mean, I often get requests from people to play songs from that or to play the entire record in order, and stuff like that. I mean that kind of thing. That seems to follow around the record that has an identity as an album that's sort of -- makes its stand apart.
It was exciting at that time for us to be on Geffen Records. "Song X" had been released prior to "Still Life," but Geffen was kind of at its peak at that time. This was, you know, a label that had been started by David Geffen. He had -- you know, its first release was a very famous one with John Lennon. And it was a real record company. I mean, what was cool about it is they had a very diverse roster and almost no jazz except for us. And what was exciting was that the people Geffen didn't think of it as "Oh, this is jazz." To them, we were just another band sort of like they had Nirvana later on. I mean, we were just one of their bands. And they got a record out there in a way that was unlike anything we had experienced. And we were at our peak at that time of touring. I mean we -- I don't know how many gigs we did during the year that "Still Life" was released but it would have been a lot, in the hundreds. All of that combined to make something happen that we had not experienced before which was a very substantial amount of records being sold and partially that was driven by the cumulative effect of the band. I mean, we were really doing quite well at that point we had for a while, but still we had never quite experienced that thing of having genuine help from anybody. We've pretty much done that all by ourselves. [laughter]
And it was pretty exciting when that record went Gold, with the first time we'd had a Gold record, which means it sold 500,000 copies just here in the States and probably that much again around the world. You know, I think you talk to jazz guys often and they always feel like if they just had a little bit of help getting their music out there, there would be -- you know, hundreds of thousands or more people would like it. And we experienced that with that record. I mean, there was nothing really overtly commercial about that record. You know, the tunes are like 10 minutes long, and we didn't really do anything except for what we did. And yet at the same time we experienced that kind of success with that record that we had never experienced before even having come off of a few pretty successful records on ECM.
"The Road To You" was the second live record in the group's story. Playing live has been kind of the passion in a lot of ways of my life, and playing in different environments has been really how I spent the last 30 years. But playing live with the group is something that -- nothing else compares to. It's been so thrilling, so satisfying, so fun to be in this band for all this time.
And I think that the two live records -- in some ways, if people only have those two, they get what the band is about. They're very accurate pictures of what we were doing at that time, and both of them kind of almost are culminations of where the band was at for the few years that led up to their being recorded and released.
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"The Road To You" actually covers almost 10 years of music in terms of the pieces that we would play and is a little different from "Travels" in the sense that there are few new tunes introduced, but on "Travels" there was a lot of new music introduced.
"The Road To You" really does sort of consolidate where the band was at in its sort of almost dream formation with the inclusion of Pedro and Marcal and, of course, the rhythm section of Lyle Mays, Steve Rodby, Paul Wertico, which, you know, was the core of the band for -- most of its history.
We recorded a bunch of gigs in Europe. And, Rob Eaton, who recorded all of our studio records, came over, so we were getting the best ears on what we were doing, and he captured exactly our sound as he always can do in a way that eludes so many other people when they try. But you get the feeling of the band in Europe during that period of time, which was so amazing. I mean, you know, we played in places for not hundreds, thousands of people -- huge outdoor gigs for six, seven, eight, nine, ten thousands people in countries where they would sing every song with us and new -- every detail of the band and what we were up to.
And it was such an incredible honor and such a privilege and such a thrill to have that kind of interest in what we were doing. And it was very satisfying to know that all the work that we had put into the band up to that time in terms of trying to find our own way of feeling and improvising and writing was really being appreciated by, you know, this incredible crowd that was not only big but, you know, when we would get soft they would get soft -- when, you know, it's time for us to go crazy they would go crazy.
And a few places in particular -- Italy is the first one I would put on the list -- were kind of what it was all about for me at that time. I mean, those audiences were so sophisticated and so aware of what we were trying to do and yet at the same time so enthusiastic. It's almost like every tour led to "Okay, how many more days before Italy?!" because that was sort of the ground zero for the band. And several of the pieces that are heard on "The Road To You" come from that Italian tour. We recorded in a few other places, but we wound up mostly drawing from the Italian gigs. And I think you can really feel -- you know, even for [INAUDIBLE] at the beginning of our record, you heard the crowd singing along. That's sort of what it was like. There were places we would play where, like Naples in Italy, where the crowd would get there an hour or two before we would even start, and start singing all the tunes. And, you know, it was just -- it was almost anti-climatic when we would finally walk up and play. [laughter] They had whipped themselves into just this incredible high in anticipation. And, you know, that's something that I never in a million years would have ever guessed would happen to this band. And yet at the same time it's one of the real pleasures of the life that I've as a musician to have experienced that.
"Letter From Home" was the second group record that we made for Geffen. That was the third in a sort of trilogy of records to us. Somehow we think of "First Circle," "Still Life (Talking)," and "Letter From Home" as going together. And I think in just sort of a general conceptual sense that can be found in the types of tunes, the types of harmony the general way that the group was being deployed at that time with the different people doing the kinds of things that they were all so well suited to do. And the focus of the band sort of seemed to be built more or less around the kinds of tunes that were represented by the tune "First Circle," and "Still Life," "Six-Eight," and "Third Wind." And that was kind of continued on "Letter From Home" with pieces like "Have You Heard." And yet at the same time "Letter From Home" to me is always -- had sort of a different complexion.
We were very excited to welcome back, after having been gone for a period of a few years at that time, Pedro Aznar. And, of course, his incredible voice always becomes an appealing and very attractive go-to spot in terms of just what it offers, you know, not just [INAUDIBLE] band, any band he's in, he's such a special musician.
And there are a couple of things about a few songs on "Letter From Home" like "Slip Away" that really featured Pedro in much more of a song like way. I mean, he had been, you know, really this sort of orchestrational element in the band. And there are certainly pieces on "Letter From Home" that have that same quality like "5-5-7" on his voice [INAUDIBLE] -- something that comes in later in the piece to just kind of italicize or emphasize certain melodic things.
But "Slip Away" was something, you know, a little different for us and was a piece that was very successful -- one of most successful individual songs that we've ever had. And for me it's a real favorite, too. It's one that at the time it was written I felt like had that durability factor in that sort of almost inevitable melodic shape and feeling that I really love to try to get to if possible.
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The band on "Letter From Home" is with the switch of Pedro from Mark Ledford and David Blamires, identical. It continued to be a period where we were quite active as a touring band. I mean, we were playing pretty much all over the world all the time. And I think that tightness, that familiarity, and the community that that band represented, especially the core rhythm section of Lyle and Steve and Paul and I with Marcal joining us, was a couple years more evolved. And that opened up, you know, the sort of infinite sense that we can do anything, which is always a great feeling to have with the band.
You know, it's great to have those three records kind of seen as three records that go together but also with their individual qualities and their individual quirks. And "Letter From Home" is, again, one that for me is one of the most special records in our catalog.
Each one of the group records has kind of a special story around it and circumstances that surround it, you know, the context that we made it in and the actual recording itself toward the tunes written. But the record "Quartet" kind of is a special, unique case in the sense that it was planned and written and sort of put together in a relatively short period of time as the group records we were going around that period. We had been making these more and more elaborate type records as we sort of were inclined to be doing musically. You know, the group has always been about finding a balance between composition and improvisation that seem to suit our interest.
As the years were going by, there was something about the way the basic band played together that had developed quite a bit. That -- I think that the records like "Still Life (Talking)," and "First Circle," and "Letter From Home," you know, reflected that growth. There was another thing that was coming out on a way that we were playing together live that maybe wasn't as apparent, maybe wasn't a priority and those records. But that was something that had to do with the way we were improvising together and especially the way we were listening to each other. And it seemed like it would be a valuable and viable idea to just take the core of the band. I mean, as elaborate as the group has gotten over the years with extra musicians and sort of all the things that have happened in the back line part of the group.
At its core, the group has always been a quartet of guitar, piano, bass and drums. And the three principles in the band -- myself, Lyle Mays, and Steve Rodby -- have been playing together and had been playing together at that time for many, many, many years. So the idea was to sort of focus on the core of the band and put some music together in a very quick and spontaneous way. The whole process, I think, from begging to end, from the time we started writing the music until the time the record was actually done was just a couple of weeks. We did it very quickly. The result I think is something that kind of filled in the blanks a little bit in that period of the group's development.
The actual music that we came up with for that record was a kind of mix of pretty loose form stuff with a fair amount of free improvisation. And the improvising part, the -- just pure playing part of it, was really exciting and really an incredible amount of fun for us. We've, of course, played so much music that was -- continues to be highly structured, that I think that kind of thinking even brought itself to the -- just free playing as I was hoping it would. And we kind of made a few sort of orchestration decisions early on, the main one being that we wanted to not use electric keyboards. We wanted to, you know, have a variety of keyboards available but none of them with the possible exception of a clavinet which is an electric keyboard but that is based on an acoustic principle of their being an actual string that's ringing. Basically no synth was kind of the thing. And we did together a very interesting collection of instruments for Lyle to kind of have at his disposal.
One of the things that was going on at that time which is now no big deal, but that was the first recording that we had made and that actually one of the first recordings made period that was a full 24-bit recording, meaning that the fidelity of the recording process was going to be extremely high in a multi track format. There had been 2-Track 24-bit recorders, but they had just come up with this thing to make it at a 24-bit multi track recording. So we were kind of writing with that mind like thinking "Okay, we have to put all these really, cool, upper extensions into the chords in order to justify the use of the 24-bits." But that was more just for our own launching padness of it all. And you know, the composition's range from being very detailed, the first tune on the record is sort of a short but almost completely written-out piece. It kind of serves as an introduction. They kind of set a harmonic tone for the record, too in that it wasn't, you know, really conventional type harmony as a sort of basic pallet. We were drawing from, you know, lots of different sources, you know, from a wide range of color possibilities with our instruments, and that seemed to be the feeling that the record was going to take.
The fun that we had doing the free playing was enhanced by the snippets of material that Lyle and I wrote together and also separately. It was an enormously fun project, and the fact that it started and began in fairly short notice was made it reminiscent of the records, that we were on ECM that had preceded at in earlier years, not with that exact band, it was a different drummer at that time. But, you know, all of those records were done very, very quickly, usually 2 days and a day to mix afterwards. This wasn't quite that quick, but it kind of followed that same sensibility.
There's a lots of high points on the record for me that really reflect the individuality of all of us. And, in particular, I think it's a record where you can really hear Steve Rodby play in a way that -- you know, it just hasn't come up that much for him on one of our records to play quite the same style. He sounds amazing on this record. The way he plays on a track called "Dismantling Utopia," which is a free tune, is just so cool. And you know, one of the other things we did for the session was to rent some different instruments. And I think, on that track, Steve was playing a different bass that he got from a bass shop here in town tuned in a different way. Each of us played some really, cool, different stuff.
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And throughout the record, Paul Wertico sounds fantastic in many ways. That's probably the record that suits Paul's personality and Paul's spirit the most of the recordings that he did with us, you know, as a band. And he really rose to the occasion and played spectacular, great, beautiful stuff all through the record.
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And, of course, Lyle, too. You know, he and I are both a little bit on the same boat in that we get so much of a sense of satisfaction from writing. And in the contexts of the group often times, the playing is sort of just something that we do that -- you know, we're happy to do and everything, but it's not the priority in the same way that the writing is. And you know, Lyle plays some fantastic stuff. His solo on "When We Were Free," which is a very simple almost kind of blues form, is one of my favorite solos he's ever played. And for that solo, one of the other things we did is that we had, you know, of course, his regular, you know, really, fancy hip, you know, Steinway piano, but we also had in the studio a really out of tuned, crummy spinet piano. And he kind of played both of them at the same time, which gave it that great detuned, very unique effect.
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As far as the guitar stuff goes, like with the keyboards, the idea was to, you know, really explore the acoustic possibilities. And I had all these, you know, very unique Linda Manzer guitars that I used in various different forms. But I used them in many ways on that record that I've never used them quite in that way before, used a lot of E-bows and weird tunings and a variety of things and limited the electric stuff to just the conventional electric guitar with one exception which is, you know, the Roland guitar synth, which is an instrument that it's kind of hard to even know how to categorize. It is something so unique and so special and somehow does conjure up an acoustic spirit in its tone and just seems to have a place at this table well. And the tune "Language Of Time" wound up -- where the Roland was the right answer for what that tune was asking.
Guitar icon Pat Metheny premieres his incredible new project, a live show like no other. Using robotic technology, Metheny has created an Orchestrion, a group of 25 mechanical instruments that play bass, guitar, marimba, percussion - all controlled by Metheny from his guitar, through the use of computer software. An extraordinary chance to hear a full suite of music composed and played by Metheny alone. Visually amazing to experience and totally ground-breaking technologically, this concert introduces a revolutionary way to produce and experience music. Metheny will also perform solo. http://www.lastfm.jp/event/1145527+Pat+Metheny+-+The+Orchestrion+Tour+
>The principle instruments have been designed and built for me by the incredibly >talented Eric Singer, who is a major innovator in this area of engineering. とオフィシャルにあるけど、Eric Singerってキッスのドラマーのこと? 神保彰という人もドラマーのようだけど、要はギターで似たようなことを試みるということかね。 ピカソギターみたいな多弦のMIDIギターを使えばパーカッションやマリンバも演奏できるわな。
I first became aware of Ornette's music kind of in a funny way. I grew up in a small town in Missouri where there was really no official record store, so the only place you could get records was at a store called the T.G.& Y. store, also known as the dime store. And they would have like all different kinds of records, including a small jazz band, and also each week, from where I don't know, they would get a big pile of records that they would sell for, you know, I can't even remember how much it was, like 25 cents each or something. And one week they got a record in called "New York Is Now," which was an Ornette record. I remember just being interested in the cover and everything about it, but I didn't buy it. And it's so happened that a friend of mine had just gotten that same record and hated it and gave it to me. You know, I didn't know much about Ornette and the controversy. I mean, I was sort of learning about jazz in general at that point, and I was like, "Well, that's the same record I saw in the store," and I just loved it. I mean, from the first second, I loved it. And the thing that had attracted me the most to it -- I was probably, I don't know, 12 or 11 years old -- was just how much fun it sounded like they were all having. I mean, everybody seemed to really be enjoying themselves so much, and the songs to me had this kind of happiness to them that was just very appealing and very attractive.
And from that point, I really kind of launched into a pretty detailed trip of trying to understand Ornette's thing and learning about all his records and all the different people that played with him, which, of course, led me immediately to what is known as the classic quartet with Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins, and Cherry. And, you know, I got my hands on those records and started to as I developed as a player learn those tunes, kind of alongside all the other stuff I was learning.
And I never really saw it as this, you know, kind of wild Avant-Garde kind of thing that I often see it as described as. To me, it never really made sense to me that there would be fist fights and people would be, you know, having these incredibly intense arguments about whether or not it was jazz and this thing or the other thing. And it still doesn't make sense to me. I mean, there's still people that -- when you say the name "Ornette Coleman," they go, "Oh, that's some wild, you know, far-out music." I mean, to me, Ornette's thing is at its core really about melody and the melodic feeling and the melodic spirit that he embodies as a musician, I think is something so rare and so evolved. I mean, there are very few musicians in any genre that have the capacity to kind of generate melody with the kind of weight that he does. And I mean, that comes across certainly in his tunes but also in his improvising. There is this song-like quality that he just offers in every phrase, whether it's as a composer or as an improviser.
As time went on, I started to play Ornette tunes regularly. When I moved out of Kansas City, the first place that I went to was Miami, Florida, when I was 18. One of the first people I met there was a musician, of course, that became a real strong collaborative for me for a number of years, and that was Jaco Pastrious, the bass player. And I remember very quickly we found that we both knew not only some Ornette tunes but some other same ones and they became kind of regular part of our playing together. And we included a couple of those pieces on what was my first record "Bright Size Life." We did "Broadway Blues" and "Round Trip." And, before that, we played a lot with Paul Bley, who was a piano player that also had a strong association with Ornette and also played a lot of Ornette tunes, so we learned a bunch from him and played a lot of those Ornette tunes with him, too.
So, even very early in my, you know, life as a recording musician, the Ornette material was fertile ground for me. I mean, it was an area for me that was interesting because it's sort of allowed me to play in a certain kind of way that had a spot in my life in the sort of whirl way. Ornette's tunes sort of bring out the country almost folk kind of qualities that I was trying to reconcile with the larger jazz language that I was trying to immerse myself in. And yet at the same time that was a big part of me that wanted to find other ways of playing, besides just playing on standards, some blues forms and that's sort of thing.
And, you know, eventually that led to me writing my own tunes, but in that early stage before I really was doing that a lot, the Ornette tunes were the tunes that seemed to open up this way of improvising that allowed me to improvise in, you know, I guess, what would be the style that I've become more associated with, you know, in terms of my sound, all that sort of thing. It probably first immerged through playing a lot of Ornette tunes. Well, I could play, you know, not necessarily on the changes, could sort of make up my own changes as I wanted along. And also I could play in a much more diatonic way, in an extended diatonic way as opposed to just having to stick to the changes or play on blues forms or heads or whatever. And, with Jaco we found a way, I think, of, for both of us. We could develop our own individuality through Ornette tunes in a way that was really beneficial to both of us. And it seemed very appropriate to include a couple of those tunes on "Bright Size Life."
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Later on, I became real close to Charlie Haden, who remains to this day one of my very best friends. I met Charlie during the period that he was playing with Keith Jarrett and I was playing with Gary Burton. And we then a couple years later did a project together called "80/81" along with Dewey Redman, who I also met during that same period because Dewey was playing with Keith, and Jack DeJohnette, and Michael Brecker. And, of course, having Charlie and Dewey there opened up the possibilities of really going in depth into that area that is so associated with Ornette.
From that point, it led to a trio that Charlie and I had for a number of years with the great drummer Billy Higgins, which brought me even closer to that circle. And in that trio, we did a lot of Ornette tunes, and they were somewhat represented on the record that we did together called "Rejoicing" but much more so on the live gigs that we did.
It was during one of those gigs with Charlie and Billy that Ornette came. And I got to meet him for the first time really. I'd met him briefly a couple of times before but he came to hear us on several occasions down at the Vanguard here in New York. You know, it's funny because when you play at the Vanguard, there's always lots of heavy musicians that come to hear you. I mean, it's quite normal. You know, actually I remember that same week Keith came to hear us, you know, and remember being so nervous while Keith was there. It was like, "Wow, you know, it's like, one of the great musicians in the history of music is there!" you know, and I was, I played really bad and was really kind of like freaked.
But it was really interesting when Ornette came. It was just the opposite. It was totally inspiring that he was there and it made me want to play my best. It was like this sense of encouragement and like was thrilling to have his presence there. There was nothing except positivity around him, and that's something that is really interesting about Ornette. His spirit is so unbelievably good. He's really one of the best human beings, you know, I think I've ever been lucky enough to know. He's just such a good person, and that goodness, I think, comes out in his music. During one of the breaks, he said, you know, we really should play together sometime. I think he, you know, would be really fun, and I was like, "Man, you know, that would be the greatest thing ever for me, I would love that, too!" And he mentioned that a few other times, and right about that period is when I had decided to leave ECM and other record company possibilities and I wound up at that point going with Geffen Records, which was a very unique situation. It was unique then and in retrospect. It's especially unique. It was really a bunch of guys that were trying to do a real record company with a broad range of people. And, you know, they didn't really even think about jazz or rock or anything else. They just wanted to have musicians that were strong individuals. And, I was lucky to get the opportunity to record for them, and I started a company of my own that they became the first distributors for, which was Metheny Group Production, which is still what goes on. And we make the records and we have different companies that we license the records to who get them out there.
And "Song X" wound up being the first project for that new relationship. And it seemed to me and I mentioned this to Ornette that it would be great to start this off with something very special, like that. And Ornette at that time was not really associated with a record company and it made sense for him, too. And we very quickly launched into this project. And it all began by Ornette and I spending about 3 weeks in a rehearsal room down in the village, playing just the two of us for, between, I don't know, 9 and 12 hours a day. We just played and played and played and played and played. And the whole time, we kept talking about how we wanted to try to do something that was different then, then anything.
And it's interesting to me kind of as jazz history has progressed, how that thing was trying to do something that's really different has become less and less of an issue. You know, it's like, that's always been a big priority for me, and I know for Ornette that's like, you know, what he lives for as to kind of mess with things and to try to reinvent things. And the energy in the spirit of what we were trying to talk about and learn about in terms of what the collaboration could be with all about that, trying to do something that was unlike anything.
You know, certainly the results, I think, especially looking back on them 20 years later, that was clearly what we were trying to do, because it's interesting to me that that record really does stand so apart from everything else. I mean, it's, of course, way different from many of the records that I've done, and even in terms of Ornette's language which it's certainly closer to, it's quite different than anything he did, too. I mean, you know, the Prime Time stuff, which, of course, I also really enjoy, had a certain kind of thing. The more quartet stuff or free jazz or those kinds of the records on Atlantic and all that had something that was cohesive, the kind of group those records together. This record is really somewhere in a continent separate from those.
And it didn't just happen that way. I mean, we really spent a lot of time throwing things out and saying, "We're not going to do this kind of thing, we're not going to do this kind of thing, we are going to do this kind of thing," and really trying to get a specific language in a specific way of playing that was for that record for that time.
One of the thrills for me about getting to go back 20 years later and really examine the project was at that time it all happened so fast, I mean, it was, because I'd signed with Geffen and there was kind of a reason to get it out as soon as we could possibly get it out. And basically we recorded for a couple of days, we mixed for a day, and we were supposed to master the next day. I mean, it was a kind of insane schedule. That is not unusual in jazz. I mean, I've had to do many records that way. But that particular record, there was so much material because we did lots of takes of each tune. I don't think we even listened to anything in the studio. We just kept playing and playing and playing and playing. And then the night of the last recording I had to listen to everything and try to figure out which ones were the good takes so that we could mix on them the next day. And I mean, for 20 years I've been living with this like, I pick the right takes and I pick the right tunes. And I knew that the mix was not as good as it could have been. And yet that was what he had to be, because a record had to get mastered on the Friday or whatever it was that week.
So it's been great to go back there and really examine it. In fact, it turns out I did pick the right takes. I mean, you know, when I listened to all the versions of the tunes that we were on there, those were the good ones and clearly the right group of songs to put together in that first version, because back then it was vinyl, so you couldn't get more than 40 or so minutes of music on a record, it just didn't fit. And in fact, to even get that much music on a record at that time, you had to compromise some things about the sound, which in the case of the mastering was the bass. I mean, the bass was always being kind of soft on that record.
So when I got this time the chance to go back and really listen to all the tracks, at first I was just going to remaster it, but I found that there were six pieces that were not only really good, they were really different than what was on the original, and just instantly it was like, "Well, we have to put these on there, and that's going to require mixing because they weren't mixed." And as I mixed those tunes, it was just like within 5 minutes it sounded better than the original, it was like 20 years of experience and a lot more perspective on things. It was really easy for me to kind of zero in on what was not as good as it could have been in the first mix. And then it was like, "Oh, man, this new stuff sounds so good we can put the new stuff and then have the old stuff sound the way it used to sound." So we got to remix the whole thing, which ended up being just an incredibly fun experience.
[MUSIC]
One of the early questions was who we were going to get to play with us. And, I mean, for me, not only as a player but also as a fan, it was such a dream to hear Ornette and Charlie playing again together, because at that point -- it's kind of hard to believe this -- but they hadn't played together for almost 10 years. And Charlie also had a lot to do with this whole thing. I mean, Charlie had been talking to Ornette about me for years and was the reason Ornette came down to the Vanguard to hear us for was because Charlie was bugging him all the time to check us out. And, you know, so it was like essential that Charlie was there.
I remember Ornette had some ideas of some of the guys that he had been playing with at that time, and, of course, the core of his band at that time was Denardo. And, you know, I had always had a real affinity for Denardo's playing. I mean, even when he was a little kid, I thought he had a kind of intuitive understanding of Ornette's thing. That was pretty remarkable. So I was totally up for having Denardo participate. And also at that time Denardo was doing some very interesting things with electronic drums, which was in a similar area of research that I was doing with guitars. I mean, that was a pretty innovative period for instrument development. You know, then, it seemed like what would be really taking it to a whole other thing.
I had played a lot at that point with Jack DeJohnette and had done this record "80/81," which, of course, with Charlie and Jack, and thought they were such a great rhythm section. Actually they had never played together before prior to "80/81." That was kind of one of the central ideas of that project, was to bring Jack and Charlie together. And you know, I suggested to Ornette that they were such a great rhythm section, that "You know what's about to happen to drummers?" And it seemed to make a lot of sense to have Jack play like more acoustic set, have Denardo play, you know, that kind of electric sound. And it seemed like it would balance things out, and it turned out to be just great.
We didn't really rehearse with all five of us until the day before the session. And it went very fast. Charlie, of course, knew exactly what to do with all of the tunes. I mean, he just instantly knows exactly the perfect bass thing to play with any Ornette tune. It's kind of weird how just easy it is for him to psych out what is exactly the right bass part. I mean, I've seen so many bass players struggle with what notes to play on Ornette tunes, because lots of times that, you know, when you give somebody an Ornette tune, just the melody. And you know, Charlie finds all these ins and outs to what those melodies suggest that just nobody else can do. So that was a thrill to just kind of witness that first-hand as Charlie saw the tunes that we had come up with. And then, Jack was very excited for the chance to play with Ornette. So there was a very positive feeling about the whole thing.
[MUSIC]
In the original group of tunes that were on the original record, there's a fairy wide range of things happening stylistically. I mean, there's some real straight ahead kind of grooves, there's some eight note kind of stuff, and, of course, there's a lot of real wild improvise playing that had a real particular kind of energy. And that's probably best summed up with the track "Endangered Species," which is kind of, I guess, at this point, it's a track that I hear people talking about a lot. I mean, it's, I don't know, 11 or 12 minutes long, and it just keeps going, it never lets up. And it was interesting in the studio, that's actually the sixth take. And we didn't take a break. We just did one right after another. And it was fun to go back and listen to the evolution of the piece.
Also that record was recorded in an incredibly small studio. I mean, we were right on top of each other. It was the only studio we could get at that time. There was no separation. We were all just in a room together. I just remember when that was over it looked like we had just taken a bath, you know, especially Jack, because we had been in there for about an hour and half. Each one of them was 12 or 15 minutes long. We'd finish one and Ornette would say, "Okay, let's do another one," and we would just go right into the next one. And it just kind of kept building and building and building until we got to that one. That was one of the most exciting 12 minutes of my life to participate in a recording of that track.
We started the record with the six new pieces, because it felt like those pieces had every bit as much to say about what the whole project was as the old pieces. And it's not like, "Oh, well, we'll, let's just tack these onto the end," but it's like, "I wanted to put those like, you know, in front of the center, like, you know, check this out."
And there's some very interesting things about those pieces. "Police People," which is the first song on the record, and “The Good Life,” which is near the front of the record, were experiments that I made at that time of taking pieces that Ornette had and writing really conventional song forms to go with them we would improvise on, which is something that Ornette has really hardly done except on one of his very early records. Mostly he's played on open kinds of forms, and I thought that would be really interesting to hear Ornette playing changes, and he was up for it, too. So we did those pieces, and for whatever reason at that time, I remember thinking, "Well, maybe those aren't what I thought they could have been." And for that reason, I kind of ended up going to the things that had really worked well, which was the more free playing.
But in retrospect of the 20 years, that was something that became kind of a centerpiece of what this new material is, is hearing Ornette playing the changes and, of course, it's an area that for me and Charlie and Jack, it's very familiar, you know, playing on tunes like that. So, in a way, you hear us doing a certain kind of playing that we didn't do on the original version that is very interesting in the Jacks position to the way Ornette to us. It's really like a new record for me now.
25 mechanical instruments that play bass, guitar, marimba, percussion - all controlled by Metheny from his guitar, through the use of computer software. (ベース、ギター、マリンバ、パーカッションを演奏する25個のメカ楽器、 すべてコンピュータソフトを通してメセニーのギターから制御される)
新作聞いたけど、相変わらずすばらしいな。TWUとSecret Storyの両方の雰囲気があるけど、やはり新作だ。 全曲聞き所満載だけど、メセニーみたいなキャリア、年齢でSpirit of the airみたいな新曲を作ってくれるのは嬉しい。 めちゃくちゃキャッチーでカッコイイ。 ところで、同曲の4:33でベースがE(コードはF)の部分はかなり際どいような気がする
Univesity of North Texas Jazz Lecture Series Lyle Mays will be on campus Feb. 22-25, 2010 as this year's Glenn E. Gomez International Artists Endowment for Jazz Studies guest artist. ttp://www.jazz.unt.edu/node/1043
とりあえず、 シーケンサーに打ち込みやすい? last train home (orchestrion) are you going with me? (orchestrion) Truth Will Always Be (orchestrion) ソロ・ギター into the dream (solo guitar) 普通にシーケンサーとの同期 september 15th (syn yamaha midi grand)?
☆☆☆ Pat Metheny Group ☆☆ American Garage ☆☆☆ Offmap ☆☆☆☆☆ Travels ☆☆☆☆ First Circle ☆☆☆☆☆ Still Life (Talking) ☆☆☆☆☆ Letter From Home ☆☆☆☆☆★ The Road to You ☆☆☆☆☆ We Live Here ☆☆ Quartet ☆☆☆ Imaginary Day ☆ Speaking of Now ☆☆☆☆ The Way Up
☆☆☆☆ Watercolors ☆☆☆ Pat Metheny Group ☆☆ American Garage ☆☆☆☆☆ Wichita Falls ☆☆☆ Offramp ☆☆☆☆☆ Travels ☆☆☆☆ First Circle ☆☆☆☆☆ Still Life (Talking) ☆☆☆☆☆ Letter From Home ☆☆☆☆☆★ The Road to You ☆☆☆☆☆ We Live Here ☆☆ Quartet ☆☆☆ Imaginary Day ☆ Speaking of Now ☆☆☆☆ The Way Up
>>481 公式のBIO読めよ。一番正確な情報が得られる。 ギターを始めたのは12歳。マイアミ大学入学前からプロバンド参加。 18歳でマイアミ大学史上最年少の講師、19歳でバークリー音楽院史上最年少の講師。 1996年にバークリーから名誉博士号を貰ってる。 >Metheny switched to guitar at age 12 >At 18, he was the youngest teacher ever at the University of Miami. >At 19, he became the youngest teacher ever at the Berklee College of Music, >where he also received an honorary doctorate more than twenty years later (1996).
☆☆☆ Watercolors ☆☆☆☆☆ Pat Metheny Group American Garage ☆☆☆ Wichita Falls ☆☆☆ Offramp ☆☆☆☆☆ Travels ☆☆☆☆ First Circle ☆☆☆☆ Still Life (Talking) ☆☆☆☆☆ Letter From Home ☆☆☆ Secret Story ☆☆☆☆☆ The Road to You ☆☆☆ We Live Here Quartet ☆☆☆☆☆★ Beyond the Missouri Sky ☆☆ Imaginary Day ☆☆☆☆☆ Trio Live ☆ Speaking of Now ☆☆☆ One Quiet Night ☆☆☆☆☆ The Way Up ☆☆☆☆ Metheny Mehldau
おまえらパットメセニー関連でどの曲が好きよ? are you going with me? / offramp tell her you saw me / secret story something to remind you / we live here 俺にはこの3曲が来てる ひたすらこの3曲を聴き続けりゅと哀しみを超えてぶっとべるね
PAT METHENY ORCHESTRION...LIVE DVD IN HD & 3D (November 11, 2010)
Pat just completed shooting the Orchestrion show for a new HD-DVD that will be available on Blu-ray and 3D formats. The show is in the process of being mixed and put together with a target release date early next year. We will keep you posted as to the progress of this project. Stay tuned!