Pat Metheny
Sunday, March 6th, 2005 | 10:25 am and filed in Music.
My Cousin, Sharon, invited me to go see the Pat Metheny Group last week in Oakland at the Paramount Theater. It was pretty cool since she managed to get tickets in the second row center of the theater - practically right in front of Pat and Lyle Mays. I’m not exactly sure how to categorize PMG music especially since it often flows through lifts or from smooth jazz stations, but seeing Matheny perform live is really quite amazing. He has such amazing guitar skills and as an added gear freak bonus, he uses (still) an old Roland GR-300 (or 100?) guitar synthesizer. Actually, he used quite a few odd stringed instruments throghout the show as did every member of the ensemble. It seemed like each person had to play 2 or 3 different instruments through the course of each song. Pat’s Drummer, Antonio Sanchez was really phenomenal. The last time Sharon took me to see PMG, Lyle Mays had a complete Synclavier rig on the tour, but this time i was a little disappointed to see that he was using a couple of Tritons and a Powerbook and a rack sampler with his MIDI Steinway. There was even a track that had an interesting Techno Filtered synth riff patterns that broke out into some Punk Rock sections for the ultimate in fusion. Lyle even picked up a guitar on this track. Still the highlight is watching Pat play the old GR stuff.
PA:: Next Saturday, March 12 I’ll be up in San Francisco giving a little informal Reason 3.0 Demo and Combinator Clinic. The guys at Robotspeak cornered me into it by plying me with barley wine. Anyhoo, it starts at 1:00pm, and hopefully they will have copies of the Reason 3.0 upgrade and full versions. Hopefully GW will join up and share some of his Reason programming knowledge as well.
R3:: If you’re in the UK (actually close to some of the metropolitan areas of the UK), you should go check out James Bernard’s Reason 3.0 Live PA and demonstrations next week. There’s more information on the Propellerhead’s Website. Follow the UK Reason 3.0 Tour Link under the Calendar section.