Best Pat Metheny Albums

[Vogelfrei]

Totally. And this tune has some very close-to-home changes for Metheny. Like all players he's definitely at his best against certain harmonies and in certain musical settings. I think this is an example where both of those things come together for maximum affect.

On the other hand, I feel like his solo is sort of negatively impacted by this comfort zone--it's a very "comfortable" solo for him, even the parts that are a little more outside.

[franco6719]

I happen to like almost everything that Metheny has done, and find something worth listening to regardless of who he's playing with or when he made the recording. My favorite albums of his are probably, in no real order, Secret Story, The Way Up, Bright Size Life, Imaginary Day, and Metheny/Mehldau Quartet.

These albums pretty much all sound nothing alike, so I guess my preference for them has nothing to do with the overall sound. Rather, I think I like them because they each seem to represent something about him as a player: his gushing melodicism (Secret Story), rhythmic and formal complexity (The Way Up), wide-open sonorities (Bright Size Life), penchant for mystery (Imaginary Day), and wonderful improvisational fluency (Quartet).

I've never heard the suggestion that he's not comfortable with his own playing before, but I guess it is kind of a possibility. Metheny is sort of accepted by mainstream jazz now, but I feel like that wasn't always the case, and maybe that feeling of alienation is why he feels uncertain about just being himself on albums with guys like Sco and Jim Hall. I don't know. Or maybe he can't help but imitate, to a point, the sort of music that he's hearing at the time, which might explain why his playing varies so much on the different albums that he's cut with different people.

On that note, I don't think his playing varies all the time. A lot of the time I hear him do the same thing over completely different musical formats, which I guess is easy if you're blazing through a chromatic lick as it would work on just about anything.

I didn't mean to suggest that he is not comfortable with his playing in these situations and certainly not he should be uncomfortable. Just that it was a possible explanation for the different approaches he takes. But it could be, as you say, that he just has a chameleon-like ability (or almost an IMPULSE) to adapt his playing to different styles to such a degree that you almost think "Is that Scofield or Metheny playing?". You can usually hear some elements of his unique style even on those duet albums, but sometimes I would have liked to hear more stark contrast. For example, on Jim Hall and Pat Metheny, I was expecting and hoping for Pat to play "All the Things You Are" in the way that he would normally play it solo and leave the sparse, motivic stuff to Jim Hall. But whatever... They're all worth listening to.

[Vogelfrei]

I didn't mean to suggest that he is not comfortable with his playing in these situations and certainly not he should be uncomfortable. Just that it was a possible explanation for the different approaches he takes. But it could be, as you say, that he just has a chameleon-like ability (or almost an IMPULSE) to adapt his playing to different styles to such a degree that you almost think "Is that Scofield or Metheny playing?". You can usually hear some elements of his unique style even on those duet albums, but sometimes I would have liked to hear more stark contrast. For example, on Jim Hall and Pat Metheny, I was expecting and hoping for Pat to play "All the Things You Are" in the way that he would normally play it solo and leave the sparse, motivic stuff to Jim Hall. But whatever... They're all worth listening to.

I agree (about the contrast). And the more I think about the idea of the other musicians influencing Metheny, the more it makes sense. To me his playing (his improvising) has always been a mixture of thoughtful melodicism and a fiery, more free-wheeling approach that kind of throws thoughtfulness to the wind. It could be that playing with Jim Hall appealed more to one side while playing with Scofield appealed more to the other.

On another note (hurhur), it's also possible that with Jim Hall he was trying to be more tasteful for fear of comparisons inevitably drawn on message boards such as this one. Since it's impossible to make Hall sound untalented, perhaps Metheny felt that if his solos were too much faster or frenetic than Hall's that he would come off as the younger, more impatient guitarist of the two, and he was trying to prevent himself from giving people ammunition toward a stereotype like that.