Album: Pat Metheny - Water Colors (1977)
Song: Oasis
Pat Metheny is one of the least conventional, but immensely talented guitar players I have ever heard. This track is from his 1977 album Watercolors.
Unconventionally, this track appears to utilize the guitar as if it were a wind chime being gently rocked back and forth in the wind. He uses a mix of a standard 12 string acoustic guitar combined with a 15-string Harpguitar. I am fairly certain he is also using a unique tuning. To accompany this cascade of soft 'wind-chiming' guitar notes is a heavily chorused and and super smooth fretless bass playing on higher register notes. The bass player must be using the volume knob on the bass to create ultra expressive fade ins and outs to every note. Almost like the wind, or a human voice drifting past the microphone.
Needless to say, this has been my favourite Metheny track since I first heard it. The tone and the mood in this track are unparallelled. If you close your eyes and put headphones on, this track will take you places.
Pat Metheny is mostly known as a jazz guitar player, but even by those terms he is exceptionally enigmatic. This is perhaps one of the finest examples of Pat Metheny's unconventional approach to song writing for guitar.
For 1977 too, hot damn!
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