“Pat Metheny: Stories beyond Words,” reflection 3 – wordless vocals
Preparing the manuscript for publication, phase two, and thinking about – and – listening to Metheny’s music orchestrated with wordless vocals
Pat Metheny: Stories Beyond Words, my forthcoming book (University of Chicago Press, Fall, 2023), is in production mode. The first half of this is a pretty work-intensive period for the author (me). I’ve been incredibly fortunate to have been assigned to my “team” the in-house manuscript production manager at the Press to copyedit my book. There are well over 2,000 copy edits to review, something I did this past week.
During the coming week, I’ll do maybe two read-throughs, this time not looking at the many corrections, additions and changes I’ve reviewed and made this past week. I’ve now turned off the “track changes” mode so I can see a text cleared of corrections and questions. I look forward to this first time reading unimpeded through my book, close to how it will read once further corrections are made. It will soon go to the layout and designer. This will also provide an opportunity for me to read while looking at the musical notation examples and listening to the music that I discuss. It’s been a while since I worked on these in tandem. I’m reminded, as I have been at this point in writing and editing each of my books that writing a work such as this is a substantial enterprise!
One section of the book particularly caught my attention. It is half a chapter towards the end, and I am really looking forward to re-reading it while listening and viewing the musical notation. It is a segment about Pat Metheny’s music recorded and performed by the Pat Metheny Group over a two decade period that included wordless vocals, featuring the singing of Naná Vasconcelos, Pedro Aznar, David Blamires and Mark Ledford, and Richard Bona.
I’ve always found this portion of Metheny’s work to be particularly revealing because of the way it not only centers well-crafted melody in the compositions but unusually strongly in the performances due to the human voices in the orchestration. Pat Metheny grew up in a family of trumpeters and bucked the tradition he was expected to carry on (he was in fact playing French horn) when he was a young adolescent. But the vocal qualities and the importance of breath and trumpet-like articulations continued when he developed as a guitarist. One hears this easily in his playing the Roland GR-300 guitar synthesizer, but it carries through much of conception as composer and improviser of guitar phrases. One way we can hear the centrality of composing in his identity as a musician (despite the maybe stronger attention his guitar playing receives in the press, and for good reason) is in the melodies he composes.
During the era of the classic formation of the Pat Metheny Group, when Metheny added wordless vocals to the ensemble, the listener can experience the expressiveness of these melodies in a heightened way. Each singer has brought unique qualities to the music, from the wispiness of Naná’s voice, to the incredibly deep expressive range of Aznar (who Metheny told me can sing essentially anything), the unique vowel formations of Bona, and the soaring sounds of Blamires and Ledford. These are but a hint of what each singer brings to the music, each of whom is called upon to perform with enormous emotional depth – and stamina.
I divided this section of the book into three parts: up-tempo works (“The First Circle,” “Tell It All,” “Third Wind,” “Have You Heard”); medium tempo pieces (“Every Summer Night,” “Afternoon,” “On Her Way,” “Something to Remind You”), and ballads (“Goodbye,” “You”). In each case, the singing is one part of the overall (and often quite complex) composition and orchestration. Each work brings unique qualities of the human voice to bear. As I write in the book, “Metheny draws upon his knowledge that differences in tone quality between low and high portions of a singer’s range, and between chest voice and falsetto, produce differences in timbre, vocal strength, and tonal clarity.”
Listening to this music closely provides a deeply rewarding experience. I hope you are planning to become a reader of my book when it is released. Assuming so, consider preparing for this section of the book by listening to each of musical examples. You can find them notated in one or both of Pat Metheny’s published song books (Pat Metheny Song Book, and the more recent Pat Metheny Real Book) to follow along listening or playing. Even better consider singing them yourself – or sing along. Enjoy them! You time will be well spent.
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