Pat Metheny Songbook (Lead Sheets)

If you only put one Metheny book on the shelf, make it this one. It isn’t a fan’s transcription project. Pat supervised it himself, and it gathers 167 of his compositions as lead sheets: melody, chords and form, laid out the way he wants them read. Around the music sit a timeline, a discography with his own comments, and essays by Pat on how he writes.

That last part is why it matters here. This site has always looked at Pat as a composer first. I came to the music as a composition student, and the formal analysis of The Way Up is an attempt to map how his forms are built. A lead sheet strips a tune down to its architecture. You can see where a melody stretches a phrase past the expected bar line, or where a harmony turns before the ear expects it to.

It’s for three kinds of readers: players who want the tunes from the source, composers who want to study how a Metheny melody is put together, and listeners who read music and want to follow along with the records. Be aware that it was published in 2000, so the later music, from The Way Up through the Unity Group and Side-Eye, comes after its cut-off. For the ECM and Geffen-era tunes that most fans grew up on, from Bright Size Life to First Circle and Still Life (Talking), it is the reference.