Pat Metheny Quotes

I saw A Hard Day's Night 12 or 13 times.

Most guys at Berklee are going to wind up truck drivers ...

Jazz is not something that can be defined through blunt instruments. It is much more poetic than that.

I was able to work with the best musicians in Kansas City starting when I was really young.

A lot of jazz artists think people should like what they're doing just because it's jazz. I don't buy that.

Music is what you notice when it's no longer in your presence ...

Learning to play is mostly about learning to hear, and learning to really listen deeply to sound in a musical way is a lifetime's worth of work.

When talking about writing, I often use the analogy of archaeology. There are these great tunes all around. Your skill as a musician allows you to pick them out without breaking them.

More and more as time has gone on, I realize that playing is really more about listening than it is about playing.

And if I ever DO see [Kenny G] anywhere, at any function - he WILL get a piece of my mind, and maybe a guitar wrapped around his head.

Jazz music will continue to thrive, possibly in unexpected ways.

I'm triggering acoustic instruments. I'm literally beating, smacking, hitting, blowing, doing physical things. It's an incredibly exciting way to make music.

I try to be prepared for the moment, through understanding, and being warmed up, knowing all about chords and scales, so I don't even have to think and I can get right to what it is I want to say.

My first relationship to any kind of musical situation is as a listener.

It's a shame that jazz is now being turned into dried fruit. It's becoming quantized, diced and defined. It's becoming an idiom. To me if it's anything, jazz is a verb ? it's more like a process than it is a thing.

1962 to 1965, where suddenly the guitar became this icon of youth culture all over the world, thanks mostly to the Beatles. Add to that, that I saw A Hard Day's Night 12 or 13 times, and that the guitar was the one instrument that my parents absolutely refused to let in the house. So you add it up and see that irresistible forces led me to the guitar.

I just have never seen anyone build anything significant in any field without having a deep and detailed sense of what they are building on.

If you plan on continuing a tradition, it might be a good idea to find out just what tradition it is that you intend to continue.

I'm always trying to find 'connections' between things. That art is the juxtaposition of a lot of things that seem unrelated but add up to something recognizable.

It's more about conception and touch and spirit and soul than whether my hardware was in place.

The reality of music itself, which is the fabric of life for me, is where most of my attention is.

'The Unity Band' project has been life-changing for me. I have led many groups of talented musicians, but this is unlike anything else.

One very fundamental thing has not changed and I realized that it will never change ... is that I really need to go home and practice.

I think jazz is actually quite unforgiving in its disdain for nostalgia. It demands creativity and change at its highest level.

If you come to my house, you won't see a wall of trophies or things like that. I'm sort of 'on to the next thing' all the time.

I hate the way chorus boxes sound.

Someone who knew me when I was 14 said I was the oldest 14-year-old on the planet. Now I'm a 14-year-old who is 60.

I can't really say enough about Chris Potter. He is one of the greatest musicians I have ever known, and every second I have been on the band stand with him has been an absolute pleasure.

Players get to that intermediate level where they can already play pretty good, and that's kind of a dangerous period because they tend to start playing only the things that they can play, rather than the things they can't.

There are some musicians who are talented and see themselves as some kind of natural geniuses or something because of a certain amount of natural ability. But that is often rarely the case over the long term.

The pianist Cecil Taylor is extremely melodic; the guitarist Derek Bailey is extremely melodic, and Ornette Coleman.

I was deep in the zone of practicing almost constantly.

The more I can learn about music, the more I learn about other things.

I love playing and working on music. It is something that I feel really lucky to be able to spend my life doing. And I don't sleep much!

There's more bad music in jazz than any other form. Maybe that's because the audience doesn't really know what's happening.

No two notes are ever the same volume. With the guitar, you really have to model in your mind this wider thing; you're trying to create the illusion of a bigger dynamic range.

There are musicians who go through their lives sort of shedding their skins. For me, I've always felt backward-compatible to Version 1.0.

What I look for in musicians is a sense of infinity.

I would always contend that talent is an element, but over the long run, ultimately, a minor part of it all; it is mostly hard work.

Somehow, trumpet is the reference point for me - it was actually my first instrument.

The beauty of jazz is that it's malleable. People are addressing it to suit their own personalities.

The first thing I learned was the theme from Peter Gunn.

Jazz demands that you bring to it things that are valuable to you, that are personal to you.

I used to love going and playing jam sessions, doing things spontaneously. I can't do that anymore. Everything you do is documented, nothing is casual anymore.