The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #51

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    90% of "the sound" is in PM himself not in the gear. I mean his picking, embelisments, approach ghost notes, special hammers, micro bends, etc. You can check this by listening when he plays lines on acoustic guitar.

    The remeaning 10% is mostly: very tone pot / eq dark, plus special reverb + delay combination.
    He uses two chain amplifying.

    But the point is, even if PM gave his guitar with set up gear to an other guitarist, it is possible you may not recognize it as PM sound.

    PM2 is a way better instrument than AG 95, the best I can say from AG is is good for its price. So it is a good idea to get a better instrument, but not for the purpuse to get PM sound.

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  3. #52

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cunamara
    it's hard to actually hear what he's playing.
    Yes, for example on Rejoicing it is definitely disturbing. As Joe Pass said in one interview, he never sits close to the amp, because "the last thing I want to hear is all the glimpses"... I can not stop thinking that the over darked tone + over reverb/delay all serves similar purposes,

    I like more Kenny Burrells way sharper tone, by the price you hear the glimpses, especially with headphones, but who cares, it's music!

  4. #53

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    Meh gear.

    Metheny’s actual sound is a lot in his right hand. Good luck copying that.

    Well the left hand too.... three fingers mostly, a lot of sliding, favouring low positions, much like Wes. As Gabor points out, the nuances.

    Get a laminate set in jazz box and roll the treble off a bit. It’ll do the job. But you won’t sound like him because you probs don’t pick like a freakish weirdo.

  5. #54

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    I tried Pasquale Grasso’s guitar last week. Didn’t sound like him....

  6. #55

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    I doubt that Metheny's early sound is all that sensitive to which guitar or which pickup. He used a stock 175 with a humbucker, and then processed the sound heavily. Not all guitars with humbuckers sound alike, but a lot of them can sound pretty close to each other.

    Metheny had an elaborate way of processing his signal which you can google. As I recall it was two lexicon delay units, set differently. Maybe some other stuff.

    Metheny himself cannot get that sound without all that gear. Otherwise, he wouldn't have bothered with it. So it's not just in his hands.

    If somebody else uses the same gear, they can get that guitar sound. At that point, they still won't sound like Metheny. Rather, it will sound like somebody else using the same processing. Metheny has a very individual way of playing which goes well beyond the gear, as, of course, you know.

    My main point is that if you're looking for that liquid sound like on Bright Size Life, I'd start with the processing and worry about the guitar and pickup later.

  7. #56

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    pat metheny's sound on albums like the trio live have virtually no effects. No delay, no reverb. Question and Answer has a little reverb and delay. No fancy stereo setup. To sound like metheny, you need to copy his solos. The more you ingest his way of playing, the easier it will be to get his sound. You don't need new pickups.

  8. #57

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    Jack for me I need to not only ingest his way of playing but I need his fingers, ear, and thinking......but you are absolutely correct......listening and absorbing is the key.

    I saw him live at Illinois State University about 1980. Had band was just getting the press. Played a 3 hour concert, no breaks, not much talk but wow it was playing the guitar at a level I could not comprehend. Heck he was was maybe only 7 years older than me at time. But lifetime in guitar years.

  9. #58

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    Metheny changed his setup over the years. The earlier years had that delay processing. So, the discussion depends on which sound you're after.

  10. #59

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    Metheny changed his setup over the years. The earlier years had that delay processing. So, the discussion depends on which sound you're after.
    agreed but in either case, new pickups won't do much...

  11. #60

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    Alhough the OP is about PM sound and not PM style and I would not derail the OP but as many post points that PM sound is PM style, and even recommends to copy it, it worth to mention it is uncopyable, and not a good learn material to copy.

    I mean you can not build on PM style like you can build on Wes Montgomery or Charlie Parker, or etc and develop further that material. PM went as far is as possible, no path there to go further. With other words even if your hero is PM, it is not the optimal approach for learning jazz guitar to deep jump into PM.

    (This lesson cost me years)

  12. #61

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    Interesting - why do you think this is?
    I’ve never tried to copy Metheny, apart from the odd bit here and there.

  13. #62

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    Quote Originally Posted by jzucker
    pat metheny's sound on albums like the trio live have virtually no effects. No delay, no reverb. Question and Answer has a little reverb and delay. No fancy stereo setup. To sound like metheny, you need to copy his solos. The more you ingest his way of playing, the easier it will be to get his sound. You don't need new pickups.
    Which maybe why, among his later works, I very much prefer his trio recordings rather than the PMG recordings. Plus his trios generally swing more than PMG does.

  14. #63

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    Make sure you wedge a toothbrush into the bridge. Very important.

    Also, stripey jumpers. And start working on the hair.

  15. #64

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    Pat Metheny : Question & Answer

    Pat:
    i'll be happy to go into detail about how my gear works, etc., but i had a revelatory experience a few years ago when i realized that "equipment", although certainly a component in my sound, really had little to do with why i sound like the way i sound. for years, between around 1977 to 1987, i never did ANYTHING without my "rig". i would never "sit in" unless i could have my amps and stuff there, i basically didn't do any record dates at all other than my own cause i was sure they would "mess up my sound" etc. etc. then in 1987 i went to the then USSR on a tour with the group and there were a few "jam session" situations where i HAD to play with some russian guys on their "gear" (and i use the term loosely). i played one night on a polish guitar and a czech amp. someone taped it and gave me the tape the next day. i was shocked to hear that i sounded JUST LIKE ME!!!! since then, i sit in all the time on any old thing and have a blast and do record dates without worrying (too much) that it's gonna get mixed wrong etc. etc. i feel much better knowing FOR SURE that it's more about conception and touch and spirit and soul etc., than whether my hardware was in place. i do, however, totally envy horn players who are "sonically self-contained". they ARE their sound, especially if they can tote their own axe around with 'em as they all easily can do.

    (Also he tells you what amp he uses.)

  16. #65

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gabor
    Alhough the OP is about PM sound and not PM style and I would not derail the OP but as many post points that PM sound is PM style, and even recommends to copy it, it worth to mention it is uncopyable, and not a good learn material to copy.

    I mean you can not build on PM style like you can build on Wes Montgomery or Charlie Parker, or etc and develop further that material. PM went as far is as possible, no path there to go further. With other words even if your hero is PM, it is not the optimal approach for learning jazz guitar to deep jump into PM.

    (This lesson cost me years)
    I couldn't disagree more. Of course you can build on the pm style and study/copy/transcribe him just like you can do with wes or bird. I have done so and have incorporated huge amounts of the PM vocabulary into my own style.

  17. #66

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    If your Ibanez AG95 is setup and playability are OK, you should be able to approach Pat's sound just fine. Turn down the tone knob a bit and IMHO (besides of course just incredible everything) some secrets lie in the picking technique/style. Try once not to pick with sharp/pointy side of the pick and use the rounder side and hit the string in a more diagonal way.

  18. #67

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Interesting - why do you think this is?
    I’ve never tried to copy Metheny, apart from the odd bit here and there.
    (If we go deeper into this we hijack this thread which is about the tone and the instrument, anyway I just wanted to emphasize, his tone is his style and not the instrument, so that is the only reason why I wrote about his style in related to the OP )

    To be short: I've also never tried to copy him, just tried to learning for example transcribing dozens of his relative easy solos, starting with Unity Village.
    Surely it improved my ear, but I had to realize, that no way to skip, swing feel, ballad feel and most importantly the blues. (I know PM plays a lot of blues on 80/81 and later, I could not learn the basic feel from those, although I used to enjoy listening them.) Now transcribing and trying to ingrain Bright Size Life is not the best way to do this. No workaround, must ingrain swing, ballad and blues. So after a few years of lack of improvement I turned to Wes, Kenny Burrell, Dexter Gordon, Chet Baker. Jesse van Ruller, Perter Bernstein, I mean I listened and admired them from the beginning, but then turned to them as methodical learn material.

    If you examine the "next" (at least 10 years younger) generation after PM (for example Rosenwinkel, Kreisberg, Julian Lage, Jesse van Ruller) they are not building on PM at all, except a rare lick on their early recordings. It is worth to take consideration of harmony innovations not only just the lines, when analyzing a musician's contribution. All the listed did big steps harmonically (one can admire one not, but the huge steps are there) and neither built on PM (who btw. did way less harmonically, (please do not refer to One Quiet Night :-) , all those musicians built and improved Wes, Jim Hall, or even Evans, not PM.

    Of course just because it did not work for me, and some of my admired guitarist also picked other way, it does not mean it could not work for others.

  19. #68

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    That’s an interesting perspective, and one I think I disagree with.

    I do agree with the point that looking into Metheny alone won’t give you the tradition and swing of the music (PM avoided referencing this stuff for most of his own stuff.) Perhaps looking into PM does lead to a dead end, but honestly can’t say from personal experience. I do think for the blues, swing and grit you go elsewhere....

    But when it comes to the contemporary scene, it seems to me there are two schools; post Pat and ‘I’m going to pretend Pat never existed.’

    Two aspects of Metheny’s work in particular have been hugely influential to my ears.

    The first is the sound and articulation. Bright Size Life gives the definitive contemporary jazz tone - super clean, rolled off, smooth with a touch of digital ambience, the lightness of touch and ‘electricness’ of the sound. The articulation on these early albums is clearly building on Jim Halls move towards a more slurred hornlike style, and that’s something that points us strongly towards Kurt, Lage Lund, Mike Moreno and others.

    Also for a fusion/contemporary player to play squeaky clean like that at the time - no trace of distortion... pretty fresh! Now we take that for granted.

    The second is compositions. It’s impossible for me to listen to contemporary jazz guitar music without hearing Metheny’s DNA all over it. He reintroduced straight major and minor chords, open strings, folk textures and many of his compositions on the first record still sound a startlingly fresh - like they could have been recorded by yesterday a trio influenced by Radiohead haha, and while I’m certain we can credit musicians like Oregon and Gary Burton for some of this, Metheny was the great populariser.

    (Just the Bm7 Bbmaj7 change Metheny uses on Phase Dance - Kurt loves that one......)

    So someone like Mike Moreno might be coming much more out of classic bebop language mixed with more modal ideas, but his sound and articulation owe a big debt to (esp early) Pat. As do his compositions. This doesn’t appear to be lost on him



    Other aspects? I think Metheny’s language is very focused on triads and pentatonic scales and when playing more straightahead very stepwise chromatic movement and again this comes up again and again with modern players.... listen to Kurt playing on Conception on his early Intuit album and tell me he isn’t in thrall to Pat’s approach. (Kurt would find his own thing, again identified as much by the sound as the note choices....)

    I agree with Pat himself in hearing most modern players as being basically a fusion of him and Bill Frisell. The aesthetic if not the note choices is very much modelled on these two giants.
    Last edited by christianm77; 12-02-2019 at 06:48 AM.

  20. #69

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    Oh of course, there’s the Benson school too.... so many of the young African American players seem to be coming out of that school - Dan Wilson, Isaiah Sharkey etc. Maybe not Justus Brown haha

    But that makes sense. Who are your gateway drug jazz guitarists? Got to be Pat and George for the longest time. That’s who you would hear as a non jazz listener ....

    And while you might not study those guy’s note choices in great depth, that will colour your formative experience of jazz guitar and how you expect it to sound on an intuitive level I reckon....

  21. #70
    If I’m not mistaken, Metheny was a big fan of Wes. Archtop, flat or half flat wounds, rounded edge of the pick is kind of like a thumb, low low action.
    Dark sound on amp. Try that for mechanics. Otherwise all else applies as to learning lines etc etc.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  22. #71

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    That’s an interesting perspective, and one I think I disagree with.

    I do agree with the point that looking into Metheny alone won’t give you the tradition and swing of the music (PM avoided referencing this stuff for most of his own stuff.) Perhaps looking into PM does lead to a dead end, but honestly can’t say from personal experience. I do think for the blues, swing and grit you go elsewhere....

    But when it comes to the contemporary scene, it seems to me there are two schools; post Pat and ‘I’m going to pretend Pat never existed.’

    Two aspects of Metheny’s work in particular have been hugely influential to my ears.

    The first is the sound and articulation. Bright Size Life gives the definitive contemporary jazz tone - super clean, rolled off, smooth with a touch of digital ambience, the lightness of touch and ‘electricness’ of the sound. The articulation on these early albums is clearly building on Jim Halls move towards a more slurred hornlike style, and that’s something that points us strongly towards Kurt, Lage Lund, Mike Moreno and others.

    Also for a fusion/contemporary player to play squeaky clean like that at the time - no trace of distortion... pretty fresh! Now we take that for granted.

    The second is compositions. It’s impossible for me to listen to contemporary jazz guitar music without hearing Metheny’s DNA all over it. He reintroduced straight major and minor chords, open strings, folk textures and many of his compositions on the first record still sound a startlingly fresh - like they could have been recorded by yesterday a trio influenced by Radiohead haha, and while I’m certain we can credit musicians like Oregon and Gary Burton for some of this, Metheny was the great populariser.

    (Just the Bm7 Bbmaj7 change Metheny uses on Phase Dance - Kurt loves that one......)

    So someone like Mike Moreno might be coming much more out of classic bebop language mixed with more modal ideas, but his sound and articulation owe a big debt to (esp early) Pat. As do his compositions. This doesn’t appear to be lost on him



    Other aspects? I think Metheny’s language is very focused on triads and pentatonic scales and when playing more straightahead very stepwise chromatic movement and again this comes up again and again with modern players.... listen to Kurt playing on Conception on his early Intuit album and tell me he isn’t in thrall to Pat’s approach. (Kurt would find his own thing, again identified as much by the sound as the note choices....)

    I agree with Pat himself in hearing most modern players as being basically a fusion of him and Bill Frisell. The aesthetic if not the note choices is very much modelled on these two giants.
    Many thanks for taking the time and go into those details. I would not argue, partly because the derail thing but also my perception of not always analytical, instead just feelings and feeling as we know can be misleading. Actually when I jump into analyze a particular thing, often it lost some magic which I do not want.

    Regarding harmony the Bm7 BbMaj7, yes and also the Bm7, CMaj7 is trademark PM, but end of story. The folk thing more like Charlie Haden and PM got it in 80/81. But most importantly when I think harmonic innovation I think way more, like Kurts or Kreisberg or JVR chords and also how Kurt, Kreisberg and Jesse van Ruller executes polyphonic play style elevating guitar to almost piano level.

    (anyway the last thing I want to ruin anyone's hero's image, so stopping here)

  23. #72

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    Try a very subtle delay pedal along with the flat wounds and rolling off the treble for a budget PM sound.

    On the broader topic, I'm sorry, but so few jazz players have either a nice, unique, or interesting tone. When they try to sound like Metheny, George Benson, Scofield, Bill Frisell... I find it incredibly boring and distracting and my response is, "Gee they are trying to sound like _____." The Mike Moreno video above is a perfect example - gee, he's playing a Metheny tune with a Metheny sound that isn't quite there, but enough to not sound as good. Snooze... Then there are those trying to sound like Scofield or old McLaughlin (awful dry boring tone) and now we have to deal with so many players trying to sound like Frisell. I can't take it. Dear God, let's hope Mike Stern's tone doesn't become a trend. All this studying and technique buried under the most boring, tired, cliche, sterile, soulless guitar tones.

    Meanwhile your technical inferiors in rock and roll have soooooo many diverse and cool guitar tone. Well, except those trying to sound like Vai or Satriani, but that hardly qualifies as rock and roll and is more like "metal for the thinking ex jazz guy with better hair." Perhaps, there is a pattern here? The more technically sophisticated the player (in rock or jazz) the more boring the tone?

  24. #73

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    Path Metheny combines the output of his neck pickup with a mic attached to the lower F-hole in all his archtops, including his Ibanez signature model and the Slaman CC.
    Does anyone know what type of mic has he been using? Any help much appreciated.
    Regards.
    /Carlos

    "Poor Mans" Pat Metheny Sound?-unknown-jpg

  25. #74

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    at one point I researched it and he was using AMT. Not sure what model, but hope this was some help

    Applied Microphone Technology - microphone for saxophone, trumpet, trombone, piano, acoustic bass, violin, cello, drums, and percussion.


    PK

  26. #75

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    I checked and the AMT website says that Pat has used theirs S15G model. But it does not look like what he has attached in the F-hole, which is a lot smaller.

    Here is AMT's S15G:

    "Poor Mans" Pat Metheny Sound?-screenshot-2020-03-04-10-59-43-png