When I first saw this video I thought it was a bit underwhelming, it just seemed a bit pointless to me to have whats essentially a glorified MIDI controlled sound module and not use it to its full advantage… The player piano works of people like Conlon Nancarrow that Metheny talks about on his website were composed and developed because at the time humans weren’t considered physically and/or mentally capable of accurately realising their music due to the complex, often mathematical rhythms, or massive chords far beyond the capabilities of ten human fingers – at least in that preview video, there didn’t appear to be anything in that vein that humans couldn’t do? So I was a bit puzzled as to the musical point of the project, the technical point of the project obviously being the super geek coolness of programming and controlling hundreds of robotic arms.

But then I read this article in the Guardian that talks about Pat controlling everything in real time by sending MIDI messages through Ableton Live, and suddenly everything became a lot cooler… As far as I understand it, the plan is to be able to control the ensemble in such a way that he can improvise with himself each night – sounds like a technical nightmare and frankly a bit of a bitch for one man to control live on stage, but if he can pull it off its going to be amazing; musically, technically and visually. I’d love to go but at present the only tickets left for the Barbican gig are £65… Time to scour eBay I think.

(Incidentally, looking at the tour schedule on Metheny’s website, does anyone else find it disappointing that there’s loads of dates inside certain countries but still only one in the UK? Obviously this is not a fault of Metheny or his people but it seems quite common to me that people only play in London when they’re doing European tours and its a shame there isn’t enough of a demand amongst audiences and/or promoters to make gigs outside London commercially viable…)