Pat Metheny

Metheny's tone is the first thing anyone notices: a hollowbody run through heavy chorus and delay into an old Acoustic 134, producing a sound with almost no edge and enormous width. It is so identifiable that it has its own shorthand among jazz players.

The playing beneath it is rigorous bebop-derived improvisation combined with a folk and Americana melodic sense that made his records reach far outside the jazz audience.

He has also refused to settle: Song X with Ornette Coleman is confrontational free jazz, Zero Tolerance for Silence is guitar noise, and the Orchestrion project is a mechanical robot ensemble. Twenty Grammys across ten different categories.