Pat Metheny: Acoustic and In Concert

Sit back, take a load off and enjoy this full length concert featuring  Pat Metheny & bassist Charlie Haden – Live in Burghausen, Germany, 2003. You might want to just preview a little, and save it for the weekend. It’s an hour and thirty some odd minutes in length. I also recommend starting off with a bottle of some nice French wine with perhaps a few imported cheeses… and of course some good company, preferably the opposite sex!

This video starts out with Pat Metheny solo… and the first thing I notice is the two 1/4″ jacks sticking out his guitar.  We’ve had another Metheny video here with that very discussion as to what it’s for. Well, his guitar is set up so that the bass strings are taken out of one channel, and the treble strings go out the other. Now I’m not sure where the cutoff is, but I would just guess you would want the bottom two strings out the bass side. I’m also noticing a mic in front of the guitar, so that’s gonna do a lot of good with giving the guitar it’s most natural tone.

Pat goes on for nearly thirteen minutes and gets handed a what the video caption says is Picasso guitar which looks like it has about five or six different string configurations and a thousand strings…(not really, think it’s 42 but wow!). The composition itself is  somewhat limited to the tunings but, it is incredible.

At about 19:00, Pat brings out bassist Charlie Haden and goes back to his standard acoustic with a more jazzy style composition. Pat to me is one of the best and most recognizable improvisational players- just a few notes and you know it’s him… great approach.

Now I’m not going to keep going here and giving you the blow by blow of the concert but, it’s worth watching for sure and there’s some nice surprises ahead.