Review of Question and Answer by Pat Metheny ***** Superior Musicianship.

I could definitely believe that some people who buy this album will fail to understand it.  It is a very complex album.  Even to a trained ear, one song may be difficult to recognize from the rest.  Yet, this is some of the best music of our generation.  The musicians that play on it are all virtuosos.

When I first heard this album, I was not much of a fan of this style of jazz guitar.  It sounded to smooth, and creamy, and it is a sound that is easy to hide behind.  However, I grew to like this cd very much.  While, Pat Metheny’s guitar production is easy to hide behind, meaning that with his sound you can’t hear something such as his finger sliding across the strings to be in position to make a new chord, the musicianship is superior.  In fact, I would imagine that through using this sound he was better able to reach a wider audience.  That is, you can’t have it both ways.  If you are going to be able to hear a guitarists every twitch, then you have to have some bite in your production, but you will lose a lot of potential customers even if your music is superior.

So, what do I think?  Can Metheny play with production that is hard to hide behind, or can’t he?  The answer is that I think he most certainly could if he wanted to but that he is using his softer production as a tool.