After releasing his now classic debut album, Bright Size Life in 1976, Pat Metheny entered the ’80s ready to rise to the status of jazz and fusion legend.
His string of albums presented under the banner of The Pat Metheny Group included 1982’s Grammy-winning Offramp, and First Circle from two years later. The band recorded a further eight albums over the next two decades after a crucial move to the Geffen label in 1986.
It is the guitarist’s extended 16th-note lines heard during this time that I have attempted to capture in our examples. After initially displaying an idiosyncratic phrasing style with lots of space, slurs and slides, Metheny moved towards a more alternate-picked style reminiscent of Pat Martino as he progressed through the 1980s.
Metheny’s knowledge of harmony, his technical facility, and a composer’s sense of melody makes his playing difficult to ‘cop’ in a few licks. A good knowledge of harmony or chord-scale theory will help us get a good idea, and we can understand his lines armed with a few relatively simple concepts. These include the following topics:
Superimposed Arpeggios
Rather than reaching for the obvious and playing a simple Gm7 arpeggio over a Gm7 chord, jazz and fusion players ‘superimpose’ different arpeggios over chords to achieve a more colourful sound using extended harmony.
A good example is to play an arpeggio of the relative Major chord over a Minor chord. So over Gm7 we could play a Bbma7 arpeggio to ‘spell’ out the notes Gm9 chord, creating a more interesting sound. In this way, we ‘stack’ harmonies to reach the highest extensions of 9ths, 11ths and 13ths.
Passing Tones and Chromaticism
Central to a jazz sound in improvisation is the subtle use of dissonance via non-scale notes (essentially ‘wrong’ notes alien to the key) to create tension and density in the melodic line. The simplest way to achieve this is with a ‘join the dots’ approach, filling in the notes between scale or chord tones on any given string.
Executing this does not require complex theory or detailed understanding but instead a visual approach where we simply fill the gaps on the fretboard between any two notes of a scale.
Motific Development
Fusion and jazz players often take a short four-note motif or fragment for example and move the idea around using a specific intervallic approach to achieve an ‘outside’ sound (playing outside of the given key).
This is often executed symmetrically in minor or major 3rds or via ‘side-stepping’: that is, repeating a lick a semitone up or down from its starting point before returning to the original key and fretboard position. This works well with simple pentatonic ideas but think twice before you try this ‘outside’ concept over Free Bird at your next gig or jam!
Get the tone
Amp Settings: Gain 3, Bass 7, Middle 6, Treble 7, Reverb 2
Although the examples were recorded on an Ibanez semi-hollow electric guitar’s neck humbucker with the tone control rolled down to 4 or 5, any neck pickup sound will work.
The recording was made using a Line 6 Helix set to a clean Fender amp tone, with plate reverb and 500ms delay. Metheny used chorus extensively in his early days and this sound will work well here, too.
Example 1
Our first four examples are short ‘melodic cells’ that can be built upon to form longer lines. They present a simple melodic motif drawing from a scale, arpeggio or interval idea.
The first chromatically connects the 2nd (9th) of the underlying G minor tonality (A) with the 7th (F). Notice how dissonant notes (non-scale tones) fall on weak beats and consonant notes (scale notes) fall on strong beats. This is the ‘rule of thumb’ behind employing chromaticism successfully.
Example 2
Here’s a two-note chromatic move across two strings as heard frequently in the lines of Wes Montgomery and Pat Martino.
It’s useful for shifting between and connecting positions, as a ‘stair-step’ effect. This is essentially what’s called an ‘enclosure’ where notes are played on either side of the target note, in this case Bb.
Example 3
This lick is again targeting chord tones: this time the 5th (D), 7th (F) and at the end, the minor 3rd (G).
Pat Metheny uses this motif frequently, superimposing it both over minor chords (as in the given example), over major chords (you can play the same example over a Bb major chord) and even over altered dominant chords; play the example over an E7 altered chord such as E7#5, E7b5, E7#9, or E7#9 to hear how the effect sounds.
Example 4
The final shorter Metheny-style melodic cell combines melodicism, a pentatonic fragment, and chromaticism. The line starts on the 9th (A), then moves to the 4th (C), enclosing the root note Bb at the 10th fret. The line then descends through D minor pentatonic scale. At the end we see the same move as shown in example 2.
Example 5
This idea is built around a Bbmaj7 arpeggio with passing tones played over a Gm7 chord, a common substitution in improvisation (Bb Major being the relative major of G minor).
The line starts as a straightforward arpeggio but becomes more scale-based in nature, joining the dots as it were between the chord tones as it ascends further. Note the use of pull-offs when descending to achieve the semi-legato effect so redolent of Metheny.
Example 6
This is a longer and more complex line with an underlying G Dorian flavour (G-A-Bb-C-D-E-F) because of the major 6th (E; here found on the 9th fret, third string) but there are hints of the D minor pentatonic scale here too, as Dorian is basically the minor pentatonic with added 6th and 9th intervals.
Note also the chromatic connecting of notes on the third and fourth string. Again this harks back to the visual concept of ‘joining the dots’.
Example 7
The next line starts with the motif from Ex1, slipping and sliding through different positions as it descends.
This line essentially incorporates, to a greater or lesser extent, all four of the shorter melodic cells shown earlier, and ends with a ‘shell’ voicing idea (a chord voicing that omits the 5th of the key, and employing only the root, 3rd and 7th). This is a moveable figure common in jazz and often associated with Metheny.
Example 8
This makes extensive use of chromaticism and enclosure in the 5th position and once again leans heavily on the four melodic cells presented in examples 1-4. The use of the idea shown in example 1 on the lower strings at the very end creates a very Metheny-like sound.
Example 9
This idea further explores the potential of the ‘shell’ voicing shape. This line starts on a Dm7 shell voicing, moving through Em7, Fmaj7, Gbmaj7 and ultimately ending on Am7.
The motif can be played with alternate picking, hybrid picking or the low fifth string can even be sounded with a ‘hammer-on from nowhere’ using mostly the third finger before making a position shift for the next fourth string picked note. This is sometimes referred to as ‘the Metheny lick’.
Example 10
Here we alter tonality for a static or non-functioning G7 (a Dominant chord not necessarily resolving to root chord). An A major triad follows, drawing from D melodic minor scale (D-E-F-G-A-B-C#) for a Lydian dominant sound (fourth mode of melodic minor). At the start of the second bar, the line briefly slips into G# Dorian.
Example 11
Here is another dominant 7th chord line that consists of a mixture of two-notes-per-string slurs and chromatics. The lick employs a contour not unike something tenor saxophone legend John Coltrane might play, using an augmented harmony trick that moves up in major 3rds.
Notice how the figure from example 3 is used in the second bar. A descending C major pentatonic run then moves towards the final target note, the major 3rd (B).
Example 12
Metheny’s bluesier side is often overlooked. After a 16th-note D minor run, somewhat pentatonic in flavour but technically Hexatonic (a six-note scale) as it incorporates the 2nd (9th), E. The idea finishes with various blues clichés but delivered with grace notes, slides and pull-offs so recognisable as Metheny.
Example 13
We stay with a G7 sound for the final example but with more of an altered dominant tonality. The line uses notes from G altered/Superlocrian (G# melodic minor) and G Lydian dominant, featuring the b9, #5, 13th and even the major 7th (F#/Gb).
The motif contained in example 3 is also used again in the first bar, while the motif from example 2 is employed in the second bar to imply the resolution of a V-I in C minor.
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