Jump in Innovation – create new music on old patterns

I saw/heart Pat Metheny last night in the concert hall in Cologne. I did not expect something special – just let him go.

He is special anyway, his music does not really fit into a category (Is this Jazz – or lounge music? somebody next to me asked me )

My friend G refused to join me as he does not come with a band but just uses big machines! How terrible, the Orchestra is a machine! Her boyfriend is an expert, he is musician. “Music is people, is handmade and is only real in a hall”. Right? This is the pattern we all have in mind. “I do not pay for only one person, I like to see and hear the band!”

Luckily I had no idea about it and I could take the concert as a surprise. He looked the same as 30 years ago (how does he do that?) His music was the same sound, it was Pat Metheny music. But he had changed all patterns and reinvented himself in the last four years, as he said. It made him more purely himself.

Sitting in front of the Orchestra, my consultant mind said:

1. This is entmystification of music (we have electronic music for decades!),
2. This is total lean (wow only one man can drive this factory of sound),
3. This is purism (you see it, it is totally transparent).

But most of it this is real constructivism, or better deconstructivism. He put all the pieces on the table, found new ones and created a new way of how to and listen and watch music. The driver is his old children memory of his grandpa’s electric piano (German invention from Leipzig 100 years ago) and the new technology (made in Japan). It fascinated his mind for years, as he said. What did he put upside down:

Her is the old pattern versus the new way

You need a band for variety – you create a percussion driven by pneumatic, magnetism

You play the instrument with your hands – you play with hands and feets (guitar + percussion)

You are a guitar player – you play all instruments at the same time

You have the electric piano to play fixed codes – you can improvise at any time

You can play what you personally compose on your instrument – now on all instruments

You play an instrument (guitar) – you use the guitar as a switch board

You are part of the band – it is you who is the creator for all

Your team are musicians – your team are technicians

In the concert he mentioned that it is very different to give interviews in Germany. The main interest is: How does the machine work? So he tried to show it in the concert (he played 3 full hours!) But the best way to understand it is in this video a bit further down the text.

But one question is still open: Why ? Is he such a perfectionist that his friends do not match up? I cannot find the answer, but if I see the old videos on youtube, I really like the band and the vocals, which are lost in the machine.