"Facing West" by Pat Metheny | Guitar Solo Analysis
Hey Guys and welcome back! Today we arere going to talk in detail about the solo from the song “Facing West” by Pat Metheny.
It is the second track of Pat’s 1992 release “Secret Story” by Geffen Records which has become one of the great fan favorites over the years. This guitar solo was also one of the very first solos that caught my attention and resonated with me as a teenager. It was basically my gateway drug to his music even before I really got into jazz guitar. Ironically, I heard the same exact story from a lot of people over the years, so there is just something special about this one! I highly recommend that you check it out here.
This is a really interesting solo because it is not really straight-ahead jazz and Pat is not playing his signature outside phrases. The song itself is very orchestral, soundtracky, and triadic, but at the same, he still sounds kind of jazzy. He obviously still sounds like himself but without the crazy jazz phrases.
Now why is that?
He sounds like he is right in between two worlds but after just listening to just a few notes you can still identify him immediately and that alone is already quite an achievement, to be honest. Correct me if I’m wrong but to this day I haven’t heard anybody who has played that tastefully and elegantly over “simple” strumming chords.
I do remember him saying in an interview that most jazz players have trouble playing over simple triads. So I’m sure there is a lot of wisdom to unpack here and let’s see what ideas and concepts we can get out of this guitar solo for our own playing.
The solo is also quite short, so if you ever wanted to play along to a solo of his, this one would be a great choice to start with
Most of the solo plays around in the key of A major. The most obvious scale choice for that would be the A major scale or A major pentatonic scale. You will find a ton of great major pentatonic licks in here and we will go into depth here about why they sound so buttery, and smooth but also jazzy at the same time.
Let’s start with the first 4 bars. Note choice wise this shouldn’t be too difficult to analyze but let’s just quickly run through it:
We simply ascend the A major pentatonic scale in the first two bars and then pull off the 4th into the major 3rd a few times. The song then goes into a Cmaj7 chord, so we break out of the tonality for a second and Pat also catches the 5th of the C Lydian scale right on beat 1 of bar 3. Pat then just descends the Lydian scale all the way down on one string until he reaches the 3rd of A major again.
Now one thing that might be already interesting to notice is that if you just look at the rhythms…
Do you notice something?
You probably have heard before that you are supposed to play more “motifs” or simple ideas that repeat. How many times can you spot a motif already in the first 4 bars?
This rhythmical figure that starts with a dotted eighth note you can find in bar 1, bar 3, and 4 again. Yes, these are all different notes but the listener definitely recognizes this rhythm again subconsciously.
Also, notice that after playing this motif for the first time, there is a half-rest. There is space and silence after the first statement. The half-rest is then followed by a quick line of sixteenth notes, so basically the opposite of silence. Not busy becomes busy. This kind of push-pull thing with rhythms gives the actual spice to interesting music. It will also make a seemingly easy major pentatonic scale sound more interesting and memorable. Just because it`s simple doesn’t mean it’s easy obviously.
We as guitar players always instinctively look for the next crazy guitar lick or outside-sounding scale. These subtle things really do speak a language and more importantly, also resonate with the listener or an audience. So this is something you already could take away just from the first 4 bars. When is the last time you played an interesting phrasing like this? I’m sure I haven’t!
So the next phrase I played for many years one way but then changed it when I watched people play this online differently. Then I changed it to something in between and now I changed it again. Long story short, this is just my best guess on how to play this part because unfortunately we don’t have any visual proof of this album version.
I’m also going to explain to you why I think Pat probably plays it like this:
We are back in A major pentatonic territory and I have seen people playing this phrase in the lower area of the neck. But the finish line of this phrase is an A major triad all the way up around the 9th / 10th fret, so that’s quite a far jump. I also do hear a slide on the original recording from the A to the B or the second to the third note. So that wouldn’t be possible to do if you would start in the lowest area of the neck.
Then there are people who play it around the shape in the middle area of the neck / 5th fret. It’s not a bad choice because you can catch a lot of the slurs and hammer-ons but at some point, you would have to slide with your ring finger all the way up to this A major triad at the end that I mentioned earlier.
It would be actually your ring, pinky, and ring finger again. I have never seen Pat play this major triad with that kind of fingering, especially at this tempo. You always want this traditional triad shape that we are going to hit at the end of this phrase to be your first, middle, and then your first finger again.
So I’m pretty sure he uses this pentatonic lead pattern which usually uses the first and ring finger and will also go diagonally up the scale. The only problem with this is the note E on beat 2 because we have to go back to A one more time. The E will feel like a stumbling block! I have seen people avoiding this by instead just plugging the low E string again. But I do hear the higher-sounding E on the original recording. It’s not loud but I think it's definitely there. My guess is that Pat hammers this E just out of nowhere which would also explain the low volume. It will also buy you that microsecond time to go back to the low A note again.
It’s a very cool and smooth ascending line. The hammer-ons and slides really do make all the difference in the sound and playability of this.
After that, the chord progression picks up a little bit but all of the chords stay basically diatonic. But instead of just noodling the A major pentatonic over this and ignoring all the changes, you can tell that Pat still targets the 3rd to most of these chords at the exact right timing. He is spelling out the chords with the most important notes which is a skill that will you develop when you are playing more Jazz or Classical music. The cliche rocker guitarist would figure out the key signature at the beginning of the song, then identify the matching scale, and then fires away.
Now don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with this approach and there is a time and place to do that, but having the skill to spell out and follow chords like this and not just thinking one scale only can make a huge difference in how people perceive your solos. That is definitely something you can take away from this. The chord progression is not jazzy at all but the approach is if that makes sense!
Then he also lands on the 3rd for the E major chord and then again on the third for the D major. He does change the scales there from an E major pentatonic to a D major pentatonic along with the chords but Pat is still catching and targeting these important anchor points within these scales. He is not just playing scales up and down even if the scale material seems fairly simple.
Also, notice again how he plays into bar 12. It is the same kind of push-pull thing rhythmically as we talked about for the first 4 bars of the solo. Quick busy phrases are followed by the opposite. We start with sixteenth notes that all of a sudden end in easy and relaxed quarter notes. It’s almost like taking the foot off the gas pedal.
Now bar 15 is probably the last challenge when it comes to technique. This is quite a stunt to pull off! This is one of these parts again that I used to play one way over the years, then watched people play it another way online, and now switched it to something in between.
This is just my best guess of how he plays it on the recording. The notes are all derived from a C#m triad and there is also a little bit of sweeping going on. Now I’ve seen people playing the root C# as the lowest note of this, which would make it much easier to execute. But I can hear the 5th (or G#) as the lowest note. We want to make it sound as close to the original as possible right? Unfortunately, the G# is far away from the shape we have to ascend later on in this phrase.
So what you do is to play the E on the 7th fret with your pinky, pluck the G# on the 4th fret with your index finger, and then hammer on from nowhere with your pinky the root or the C# on the 9th fret. I guess it’s a slide and hammer-on from nowhere at the same which is a little awkward but that’s the only way I could explain him playing this thing while catching the G# at the bottom
And this entire busy sweeping phrase ends again on the 3rd of F#m7. Right there at the right moment on beat 1.
As you can see the chord progression gets busier again but Pat targets all the 3rds to each chord again.
Okay guys, I hope you enjoyed this short anaylsis of Pat Metheny’s solo for “Facing West”. It is a great jazz guitar solo that you could practice over the summer! You can find the free transcription to it down below.
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