Pat Metheny: How to Build a Solo on James

[Music] you have a natural flow of creating tension and then resolving it putting spaces playing dynamically because all these things are taken into consideration that make your melodi that make your playing so melodic regardless of what the chord progression is because you'll play over things that are very complex like the bridge on james that keeps modulating right so um that's a thing that most jazz players can't play i i mean i i've been watching a lot of really good bebop players they cannot play and burn on the bridge of james they can't play over the bridge of jeans yeah i mean it's fun it's interesting how that works you know i mean one one thing i will say kind of is a little parentheses here i think a lot of people just listening to the tunes think they're way easier than they actually are and i think that's good you know i mean i've had that feeling myself like i've watched pat martino i go that doesn't seem that hard no but or paco like well like i think i could probably do so when you're playing over the bridge of james though it sounds easy because you're playing you're able to weave through that chord progression so so so effortlessly yeah okay so pat you have your guitar here um let's talk about james we're talking about the bridge to james now i use i always say that that major chords for jazz players playing over major chords that's like kryptonite for jazzers right and now james has has uh you know major chords has inverted major chords and dominant chords and things like that why is it so difficult to play over these kind of things and and you're incredibly good at doing this let's talk about the chord progression first for the bridge well the you know most of james is diatonic to to the key and i'm even the bridge if you were to play it in the key of c you'd still be on all white notes which is you know it just kind of came out that way um you know the idea of kind of pushing diatonic harmony just a step or two along the way is something that you know is interesting and fun and a lot of standard tunes do things like that too yeah um but where james has a sort of cultural connection is probably much more to literally james taylor who is who who i named the tune after actually um you know it's this very kind of diatonic thing meaning it's going to stay kind of within the basic chords that people know that are in the key of and it basically is that and why jazz guys have trouble with that is that the approach to it i think that a lot of people do is they kind of do pentatonic stuff yeah which is a you know it's a solution it you won't you won't offend your neighbors much and you also won't say too much about the chords you're going to be just kind of surviving and playing above it all yeah i mean the thing for me about playing tunes in general whether it's a simple diatonic-y kind of thing or a complicated set of changes is that to me the idea would be to show people the changes like check this out sure look how cool it is when this note changes to that note so i'm always trying to find the places in the chords where the you know activity that's moving the chords along is happening and at the same time you know i think you've done talks about common tones being a really uh good um thing to look for so that you can connect ideas and all that so sort of a combination of those things is certainly at work but the key thing for me in any tune is to first of all be able to just kind of solo playing the notes in the chords right which is sort of the way the music developed for a good chunk of its history i mean you know there were major improvisers that were playing uh more in what we would call a vertical way yeah meaning up through the chords as opposed to going across the chords and the thing is if you can't really do that this thing is probably not going to be that deep you know it's going to be kind of a like i was saying you're going to be floating above it so the cords to the bridge are still we've all kind of been in the key of d yep and now we're going to set up a 5 to yet another part of the d diatonic world and then we're going to put kind of you know a set up chord that's going to get the second frame and now we're back yes [Music] but describing those chords in well you're improvising that's the trick so tell me before we describe yeah so so literally the chords are a then f sharp seven and i'm putting in the g so it's got kind of a flat nine which is very typical to go to a minor chord now we're to b minor and then i'm going to go to a again but this time in the first inversion c sharp yep with the c sharp and then back to the tonic and now we're going to go to the d flat but over f which is going to lead us to that f sharp minor and then to e over g sharp yeah it's that first inversion and then we're at the v chord and that's kind of like an e minor inversion yeah and then we're back to the tonic again that's like b minor and then i mean all of those you can kind of do a lot of different ways of looking at it i mean honestly when i play this tune now i don't even know what i'm playing it's like i'm like it's just the shapes of the chords that they're moving around but um technically that's what it is so the step one for me would be then to be able to [Music] and then you know and then you're in back in the tune but being able to then and i'm only playing the roots the third you know the fundamental notes yep to then be able to go [Music] [Music] and i'm just yeah all i'm doing is just playing the chords if somebody did that on a bandstand they would people go yeah sounds great especially if you can do it in you know you know it's really very simple but it's very effective so then if you kind of you know you still have that idea but you're kind of like thinking of things that are going to outline it [Music] all of that is just diatonic triads right and you know it sounds good and then you're like in the tune you're showing the tune you don't even need a bass player you know let alone a piano player you're you're illuminating what those chords are and that's the that's kind of the thing for me is to like isn't it cool how it goes to that d flat check this out and where that happens you know are these little lines that's right and i mean you can even this is the baseline which kind of says a lot right there so if you just take the baseline and add a note on top that's right [Music] two notes so it's like understanding again that's the word that seems to keep coming up in our talk today understanding kind of opens the doors to things so you know in this case you know being able to just um in a very simple way explain what makes stuff happen seems to work i want to remind everybody that the new beauty book interactive is out so you can get it at my store just go to beautobook.com if you've bought a previous version of my beato book you can upgrade right there and check out my beato ear training and quick lessons as well thanks so much for watching [Music] you

Channel: Rick Beato 2

Views: 106,969

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Id: BIBo47A8AmE

Length: 10min 7sec (607 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 19 2022