Win a New Hot Hand®!
Register here for periodic email updates to qualify.
We respect your privacy. We will never share your personal information with anybody else, ever. We will never sell your personal information to others. We hate spam just as much as you do.
Pat Metheny!
Source Audio Blog
Pat Metheny!
Monday, July 28, 2008
Posted in:
I read a great quote by Pat Metheny in the September 2008 edition of Guitar Player Magazine. Editor Jude Gold poses the question, “what advice do you have for guitarists who aspire to have a long and fruitful career playing jazz?” To which Metheny replies: “Always try to be the worst player in every band you are in”.
To tell you the truth, I thought it was a joke at first, as Pat seemed slightly annoyed by his decades-old comments about Kenny G, which Gold brought up a few questions earlier.
But once a minute rolled by, and the words sunk into my feeble brain, I realized what a gem Metheny had just spoken.
He is basically telling us to surround ourselves with greatness – with people who know more than we do, so we can symbolically “stand on their shoulders” and fill ourselves with knowledge and experiences.
It's also quite a brave statement. We are bound to occasionally fail when we are truly tested - but we have to but those feelings aside if we want to reach our true potential. In a safe environment, we can control our failure, as it were - but we also can never grow in that setting.
To look at it another way, what is the alternative? To surround ourselves with mediocrity? With players without a thirst for knowledge? In that environment, what could we possibly ever learn?
We could also interpret that as immersing ourselves with what is new and challenging. New guitar tunings, new guitar and amplifier sounds, new effects, new song structures, new ways of looking at music. Learn. Don’t ever stop.