-
METHENY: Swing is kind of this 'quality'? It exists in human interaction. In the way somebody talks and moves. I find its resonance in architecture, and literature.
INTERVIEWER: Acting?
METHENY: Yeah, acting. And refrigerator repair.
-
10-24-2016 01:59 PM
-
.... something tells me this might turn into a "what the hell does Metheny know about swing!" debate....
-
Swing is groove. It's way more than a triplet feel over 4/4.
-
And far be it for me to opt to be 'first up'.
Originally Posted by princeplanet
.... something tells me this might turn into a "what the hell does Metheny know about swing!" debate....
I think PM a very gifted and original guitarist and musician. However, the way to express my feelings on the topic at hand is to reflect that I got, er, quite a chuckle when he elected himself rep of the 'jazz community' and 'emasculated' Kenny G....
-
Oh, Kenny G did that all by himself. ;-)
I've not had the sense that PM elected himself the rep of the jazz community, but he's an engaging and articulate interviewee so he ends up in that role. And he has strong opinions that he's not shy with. While there are others- Gary Burton springs to mind- PM is better known to the general public.
And the swing feel- decades of trying and it still can't be properly notated to universal consensus.
-
As do I. Gotta respect the man for that. Originally Posted by Cunamara
Would that I could pat my feet to his playing, though...
-
I mean, by way of explaining:
I appreciate that Mr. Metheny is a game-changer on our instrument and a deeply passionate player with impeccable craft and time (not to mention chops and control I can only dream about). My problem is merely that when learns a language one starts with the basics.
Swing, blues, vaudeville, ASB are the plasma and lingua franca of jazz. When you get away from that, as I believe he largely has (through now a kind of tradition in himself---certainly a good thing) you leave out the edifice's foundation. Not the coolest thing from where I listen, especially when these essentials get increasingly distant in players influenced noy only by him, but players influenced by him...
-
I don't disagree, and can certainly see (or hear) where this view comes from. However, I believe that occasionally PM does show that he does know how to swing. One of my favourites: Originally Posted by fasstrack
-
Not bad. His double-time does NOT swing at all IMO. Notey, uncompositional and almost rushy to me. Makes me nervous, not smiling. Thankfully, he doesn't do it much here. The feel on the heads is very nice, though. Had he developed THAT...Sounds cool, though. Originally Posted by newsense
To me here is a true, died-in-the-wool swinger on guitar that Pat and the rest of us ought to bow DEEPLY to:
Last edited by fasstrack; 10-25-2016 at 04:33 AM.
-
OTOH: When Pat does THIS he is masterful and beauty itself. He doesn't NEED to swing, he makes a powerful statement within what HE does (to me, a perhaps midwestern lyricism and gorgeous sound---especially when unemcumbered and undistorted by devices and pedals he favors).
-
Sooooo... then should I take this to mean that nobody on here is into refrigerator repair?
-
That's called a "day job" LOL
-
What exactly is swing? To quote Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan: "The answer is blowing in the wind."
Even if I can't define it, I know it when I hear it. For me, Wes Montgomery's control of swing feeling is almost unsurpassed in the way he could play before, on or behind the beat in fractional ways depending on the situation. His solo on Coltrane's Impressions comes to mind when I read the quote below:
"Listening to [Wes Montgomery's] solos is like teetering at the edge of a brink," composer-conductor Gunther Schuller asserted, as quoted by Jazz & Pop critic Will Smith. "His playing at its peak becomes unbearably exciting, to the point where one feels unable to muster sufficient physical endurance to outlast it."
-
Wonderful. Originally Posted by AndyV
Maybe Pat can't swing quite like Wes (who can?) but I get what he's talking about when he says swing is in many non-musical places. Music has always managed to express the zeitgeist of each age. I believe that in the period from the 30s until the early 60s, swing was a quality of American and to a certain degree,Western life. Swing music was able to express the feeling in the air. The optimism. The energy.
-
Metheny can't swing?? LMAO....I hope to NOT swing like him then, rather than play with cliche phrases and have ZERO originality.
-
Swing may be hard to define, but it's one of the elements that can make Jazz Magical.
-
Originally Posted by fasstrack
Was this a joke post?
Pat Metheny has no business "bowing" to that (competent) player and if anything (and I really thought your use of "bowing" was silly in the extreme), it's definitely the other way around.
Pat swings his ass off so I have no idea what you are hearing. Not to mention Jaco, Brecker, Liebman, Corea, Swallow, Dejonnette, Scofield, Diorio, Rosenwinkel et al raving about Pat for decades...
-
Who's got the video link of Pat swinging his ass off with the metronome at some class somewhere?
I'd say it's certainly not that Pat can't swing. Chooses to play music that often has a different feel. Has great time, groove, feel...that IS swing to me. It's not just swing in a traditional sense.
-
We can argue all day (and probably will) about Pat, but I think his larger point is well taken. Swing is a part of how we interact with the world, and especially with other people. My own observation is that one of the reasons swing can't be notated is that it varies so much from person to person, between people, within the same person from day to day, and from place to place. Kansas City swing is different from Philly swing, is different from New Orleans swing. Does Pat Martino swing? His eighths are almost completely even, but he still has a swing feel to what he does. As a newbie, you can get your feet wet by practicing the triplet thing, but sooner or later, it's going to evolve into something... not quite that.
One of the things I'm really enjoying about playing with my ensemble is that we've been playing together as a group long enough that we've developed a common sense of swing. It differs from week to week, but we lock in easier than we used to. I notice it a lot when I play with other people. I could play with the same drummer and pianist, but if we have a different bassist, the feel is different, and a little trickier to negotiate. When people say that playing with others is a necessary part of learning to play jazz, I think this is a big part of the reason. Its not something that lends itself to verbalization or quantification. You can only develop it by experiencing it.
(For the record, I think Pat can swing his ass off when he wants to. He doesn't always want to.)
-
Originally Posted by jordanklemons
ahhh...Zen and the art of Motorcycle Repair...your bike gets fixed ... but you never worked on it.
-
I've heard Metheny discuss how he kind of rejects notions of jazz requiring certain "components" to be legitimately jazz. The concept of "swing" being one of them. I have noticed he tends to avoid the use of that term. Rather he will use words like "groove" or "vibe" in describing desirable qualities he looks for in the music he creates. It seems like the notion of swing might be too narrowly thought of as the dotted eight and sixteenth phrasing. And I think Metheny has taught us that you can have jazz both with and without that traditional phrasing.
I've recently been going back and listening to his early stuff and am floored at how bold he was as jazz guitarist. It's like he thumbed his nose at the jazz community! He basically threw out everything that was typically considered fundamental to jazz guitar. His tone was not warm and sweet sounding. He rolled off a ton of bass and got this very midrangey tone with that chorus/delay tone. And no swing phrasing! Yet he was recognized as a jazzer.
Now he moved past that and for years now has been going more freely between a more traditional vibe and his signature stuff. He really has no boundaries at this point.
What an inspiration he is.
-
I think of swing, groove or vibe as making the music dance. With a good dancer, gravity, momentum and propulsion of all the body parts come together to provide a fluid motion. I'm not sure if that's a good description, but it's the best I can do.
-
Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Yes indeed, until I listened very closely to that lesson recording, I had no idea PM could swing that hard and have since tried to find recordings where he played in a similar vein. Anyone one know of any straight ahead PM tracks where he's playing a minor blues (Like Mr PC?)
-
'Question and Answer' with Roy Haynes and Dave Holland is one of his most straight-ahead recordings. Originally Posted by princeplanet
-
To define swing as narrowly as it is being defined here leaves out a huge amount of music that swings without the triplety feel of 40's and 50's swing. Brazilian music of all sorts, African music of all sorts. Metheny was a breath of fresh air from his 1st appearances on the scene: new tone, new time, new concepts. None of these diminished in any way the great established players; in fact, his lifelong worship of Wes shows where he came from, but didn't stay. Jazz is an evolving music, not a museum exhibit.
Metheny sparked jazz guitar's 2nd Epoch, after Wes had taken the Christian and Django breakthroughs to their logical height. Wes, like Bach, synthesized all that had gone before into virtual perfection of time, tone, inspiration, and a vicious swing. Pat took all that and opened it up for a new world of jazz, which many resent or feel uncomfortable with, but which gave the guitar a leadership role in the new generation's jazz. Metheny developed a following that no jazz musician (save perhaps Miles) had, and Miles did it by breaking away from the old, also resented by many. Metheny also brought a new method of composition with him, as well as a standard of production, both live and recorded, that raised the bar.
Reply With Quote
Desmond/Bickert video
Today, 02:25 PM in The Players