The Guitar Style of Pat Metheny Part 1 "The Early Years"

hi everybody I'm Rick Beato in today's everything music we're going to talk about the guitar style of jazz guitar legend Pat Metheny it's coming up next have Athena was born on August 12 1954 in Lee's Summit Missouri began playing guitar when he was 14 years old and by the time he was 18 he was going to school for music this is a 1972 at the University of Miami where he was quickly offered a teaching job he was apparently much better than any of the other guitar players and they had such an overload of students that they offered him to be the second guitar teacher there a year after that he was given a teaching assistantship up at the Berklee College of Music in Boston by Gary Burton the famous vibes player Pat then developed a relationship playing with Gary in his quintet which also featured Mick good Rick who I studied with when I was in college back in the 80s in Boston and that led to Pat to getting his first solo record deal on ECM records where he released the record bright sighs life now many of you know that record it's a very very famous jazz record and it features Jaco Pastorius really on his first big recording and Bob Moses on drums this record when it came out was I think Pat said it sold about 900 copies at the time during its life cycle when it had first come out and then went on to be a big selling jazz record and it's really really famous not just a jazz guitar record but just a famous jazz record period and it has some of Jacko's what I think is some of Jacko's greatest playing on it this is pre weather report pre Jaco first record so Pat then after brights less life we're going to get into some of these records too but just give a little historical perspective Pat second solo record was called watercolors which came out in 1977 and featured Lyle Mays on piano who was later to become his partner four years in the in the Metheny group ever heard Weber on bass and Danny Gottlieb on the drums this record was the kind of the start of the Metheny group boat but I wouldn't say it was only the official that wasn't the official quartet that actually happened on the next record called the Pat Metheny group and that featured Pat Lyle on keyboards and synthesizers or piano and synthesizers Dan Gottlieb on the drums and Mark Egan on the bass now mark was a fretless bass player that played very much in the style of Jaco Pastorius and there's even a song on there called Jaco the pat road is a you know you know in honor of Jaco and it sounds like a Jaco style bass part in it that's that record featured songs that were in the real book like April joy phase dance phase dance became kind of the Feeny track that they'd open every concert with a lot of you that our Matheny fans would recognize this if you followed him back in the seventh 70s and 80s but it goes kind of like this you so on so forth like that it starts out in this B minor 11 to b-flat major 7 or major 9 which he solos on for the most part I read interviews where he says he would play that song first because he felt like it cleared the air and was it was a great song up-tempo song to kind of start out with I should mention on the first record on bright sighs life a lot of those tunes are in the real book the real book is a jazz for those of you that don't know is a book that came out in the 70s it was an illegal fake book and many a Pats Tunes were in there like bright sighs life that was on there there was a song called Unity Village there was a song called there was exercise number for X and number six he had a lot of tunes were called exercise didn't have the names because I think that the real book was written well Pat was before the record had even come out and when they were called exercises each song kind of has an interval that is related to it for example right sighs life is based on perfect fists or the opening riff for Sarah but it's a perfect faith so it's using three successive fifths in it in the opening riff unity village uses major sevenths is based on major sevenths but the this is a really cool example of an aioli and sound he's using the two major seventh intervals that are found in the Aeolian mode so between C and B and then between E and F those are both major seventh intervals that are both in them in a Aeolian mode there's another one called missourian compromise that's is something like this and what is that is based on force so that's got fourth fourth fourth each song featured a different interval or was written around around different interval combinations that I think Pat was into at the time what I like to talk about next is Pat sound since it was such an identifiable thing that the the sound he had on electric guitar he also had as a completely identifiable sound on 12 string on guitar synthesiser but we'll stick with his with his sound so Pat used to play through a es 175 blonde they had only one pickup the second pick up back pickup that's normally there was taken out and it was covered over with uh with duct tape and he had a a toothbrush holding the guitar strap on that was there for years it was just always there um he would play with flat wound strings d'addario chromes they are these are actually put them on on this guitar for this video and he would play with a Fender thin pick incredibly thin I talked to him one time way back in the early 80s when I met him pray 81 or so and I asked him what his picks and he said that he would go through an entire bag and find about two picks that he felt were thin enough to to use and he'd discard the rest of them he played by the side of the pick like this that would give kind of a thrashing sound now because there's more surface area as opposed to just playing with a point this would be with a point ears playing with a side it's a different sound it's got more when I say more service area I mean more of the pic is touching the string in a larger area and that really affects the sound that you're getting now the idea of using flat ones most jazz players would play with flat ones and when you slide with flat Mouse it's really easy to slide without having any squeaks you don't get any squeaks you don't get any of those and the lower in the lower register you get no finger squeaks all you hear right there nothing the next thing would be his amplifier that he played through so Pat used to play through an acoustic 1:34 guitar amp they came out in the early 70s they were an open back 410 amplifier that was I believe 125 watts here's a action image of the specs of the amp it's a two channel amp as you can see 80 pounds so it was a pretty hefty hefty amp and he would use two of those amplifiers now with those amplifiers in stereo he had a series of lexicon delay units called the lexicon primetime these were the precursors to the lexicon PCM 41 and 42 the other thing is the pitch change on it or the chorusing sound that's done on the prime times you can see from this photo the VCO that is essentially where the chorusing is done it was common on all different types of lexicon delay units the PCM 41 PCM 42 this was essentially a chorusing it would it would add in it what you could actually change add the amount of pitch change that you wanted to have in there and it would give this chorusing effect it's really more of a D tune than a chorus you can see from the picture here with this setup that he's got the two acoustic 134 and then he's got the two prime times set for the two different delay lengths 14 milliseconds 26 milliseconds then above that he's got two mxr digital delays those were used to add the four to 500 millisecond delay to give his sound some length that would be sound like that the 14 millisecond 26 millisecond give you that chorus Pat's really chorus guitar sound when you're hearing when you're that kind of a sound and then the longer delays that are done with the MX are digital delays create that whole sonic environment that is so familiar to you with those early Pat Metheny records I probably saw Pat play about 50 times in this series I'm going to talk about Pat's playing from 1975 to 1984 which to me was his most interesting fertile growth as a player I always talk about people's 20s to age 30 that is there usually when people empower the best improvisers because they're there they don't have a lot of they're not set in their ways into a certain type of pattern playing he was really getting his chops together and improving technically if you listen to bright sides life it's technically his he could just get his ideas out barely but by the by 1984 he had incredibly good jobs he practiced all the time and he could execute anything he could hear one of the characteristics to Pat's playing is a really strong left hand now he does a lot of slurring in his early playing there's a lot of you'll see a lot of lines like that where he's going he doesn't do that as much anymore but he does do a lot of slides another thing you'll hear is repeated patterns that will also do different types of hammer-ons to create this horn-like effect I talked about in one of my videos but he does a quick 1-2-3 hammer that's really kind of out of a Wes Montgomery tradition thing it's it's the way that jazz guitar players would try and sound like horn players when you do a quick three note grace know why do people think he's sliding in which he does do sometimes but if you really listen closely there's many as we go over the some of the examples many times you'll hear him do that one two three really quick grace note it's hard to do you have to practice I just bring it up I practice it over triads things like that another thing from one time when I got a chance to watch him warm up for about an hour so I showed up at a gig in nineteen it was probably 1981 and he was playing in Rochester New York where I'm from at a place called Nazareth College and I walked in in the afternoon before they did soundcheck and I heard Pat I just drove up there to see if I could walk in on soundcheck and I heard Pat practicing and I remember this would just go on and on and on everything lines but really regimented practice he would do chromatic scales I see him play scales and thirds chromatic scales and thirds he played a lot of triads a lot of arpeggiated triads he'd start down low then he play he then move on to triads the in progressions angular lines there's kind of angular lines like that or those those kind of lines that he do a lot of hammer ons like that and they would sound really cool I think because the pic was so thin and he had such a strong left hand that there was really no differences sounded it gave you the impression that that all the notes were being fair you'll go up and down scale so you take an idea need to do the third and the octave so those kind of ideas I like to start out with some pets early playing and show his approach to playing over changes this is the first glimpse when PAP first came out even with bright size life it was hard to tell how much of a jazz player he was it took a couple records too for myself and for a lot of people to realize that he was really a bebop player because the Metheny group didn't quite have those kind of songs that you could stretch out on the he would stretch out on that would have two five ones for example but it would be things like this first little clip I'm going to play you with him playing over a two five one that gives you an a hint of his ability to play over changes so check this out okay so the progression he's playing over let's check it out it starts out on B flat major seven and then it does a two five e minor seven a seven to D 7sus4 to d7 he starts on B flat major seven though ah kill hear it again okay so what is he doing there really cool so on the B flat major 7 chord he's playing a B flat Lydian sound okay so he's using this he's gone and then e minor she's coming down right down an E minor 9 sound a D major triad 5th to the 9th to the flat 7 to 3rd then he goes on the a7 guards come for the third to the sharp nine back to third that he goes that's right out of a a dominant diminished scale and he's going up to the 5th of the chord to thee he's ending on that single note listen to it again on the D it goes back D minor seven you go on slide and there's two slides you can tell their slides because the note doesn't die listen up slide slide right he always does these things off one string it's really really fascinating fascinating so that whole section is goes like this so that's your first that was kind of one of my first glimpses into his ability to play over changes where he was he actually sounds like a B Bopper there that was that was kind of well that's really interesting he could definitely place incredibly well over changes okay so this next riff is one that you heard Pat play in a lot of solos or ones that are similar to this this is kind of the first time that he does a little bit of it on bright sighs life but you really start to hear it now with the group it's a pentatonic based lick so check it out it's over so it's over B flat major seven B flat major 7 2 D minor 9 so he's going um so so it's a really fast pentatonic line listen to it it's very simple but yet really cool so it's over this B flat major 7 that's not the riff ends listen up he's going well that's a d-minor 9 pentatonic okay so it's got 9 root flat 7 v it's in that position and then he's going to down at a minor pentatonic in 3 in groupings of three he's going so it's that's grouping of three another group you three off the B string of that grouping of three so it's off the that note that note then no so it's a first grouping second grouping so he's gone so here it is you'll start to your path do these pentatonic licks you hear some of them on bright sighs life for sure um but that is one uh that's him using different pentatonix that you would normally use so on the B flat major seven chord E is using a D minor right which would go perfectly over B flat major seven it's so it's the ninth of the chord the seventh sixth or 1350 so okay but he's doing up here just E minor pentatonic over this in a different position then when it goes to the D minor nine he switches him which is an a minor pentatonic on the D minor nine chord so he swapped out because the difference been done he's got that in that court and that court there in Augusta here so he's wanting to make that change between those two pentatonix so then you hear that half moved down to the e because there is no app in this a minor pentatonic so a minor pentatonic works over D minor 9 because it gives you the route 911 v flat 7 then boom 911 v what's seven so and on this so you're going from here G minor pentatonic to a minor pentatonic only one no difference between the tube scale moving on to American garage to that record let's find a couple other quintessential Metheny licks so here we go okay so he's using a D major pentatonic over D major he's going to do sliding from the 9th to the to the 3rd of the chord and playing at 6 of intervals so sore out of this on the D major pentatonic he's gone it's really like a D major blues um D major blues pentatonic so you've got the so it's 1 2 flat 3 3 5 6 that's really a great sound that's a quintessential pad sound okay so there's another quintessential Pat so he's gone but there's a lot of ghosting in there that's really kind of part of us is vibe this next riff is in the same song and it's the foreshadowing of Pat's real chromatic period what I'm talking about is the really close chromaticism on two adjacent strings now check the lick oh that's the first time I really heard him play anything like it right here let's do it again okay so he's playing this okay so here's the riff I'll play it slow so how does this riff go you start it with your pinkie on the twelfth fret of the D string and you play nine ten nine pull off on the g string and then a fourth finger on the eleventh fret of the D back to your first finger at the eighth fret of the G and then it finishes so does the same thing again a tenth fret tenth fret D string pull off of the g string from eight seven fourth finger on the ninth fret of the D string to the first finger at the 6th fret of the g string then he's going got some ghost notes in there I've got about two hours of material I haven't even gotten past a couple of lines here into the deep part of Pat's playing which I'm going to get into in the next couple episodes of this so I'm going to do at least a three part series on Pat's playing because it's well there's a lot of material to cover that's all for now I'm

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 492,238

Keywords: Rick Beato, Pat Metheny, how to play like Pat Metheny, Jazz Guitar, Pat Metheny sound, Pat Metheny Gear, Everything music, Jaco Pastorius, Bright Size Life, Pat Metheny licks

Id: HIu-04SKFMk

Length: 26min 52sec (1612 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 21 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/honeybadger919]

Phase Dance

[u/reddity-mcredditface]

April Joy, which is track five from Pat Metheny Group's self-titled debut album) in 1978.

[u/maxeternalmusic]

My favorite “old” tunes by Pat are “James” (a tribute to James Taylor) and Bright Size Life, the title track on the record “Bright Size Life”. Both songs have solos that are easy to transcribe and play. The BSL album features Jaco Pastorius on bass and Bob Moses on drums.