Pat Metheny's "At Last You're Here" Guitar Solo Analysis | PART I
Alright guys, let`s move on to the next Pat Metheny Solo. So the last one we worked on “Have you heard” was a very fast tune where there was a lot of stuff going on.
Let`s switch to a very different vibe. To a song called “At Last You’re Here”. It is the second track of Pat Metheny’s 2008 release “Day Trip”.
To be honest this one might be my personal favorite song of his because it just showcases so many things in just one tune in a simple trio setting. We as guitar players usually tend to think about what exotic scales to play, what hip chord to play, or some other fancy technique, but at the end of the day, great music is always a mixture of everything. It always comes down to balance. And this song in my opinion is a prime example of how that can work in a very intimate trio setting.
At first glance, you might think there is nothing flashy going on like in the previous “Have you Heard“ solo but if you dig deeper you will immediately find out that there is so much more to discover beneath the surface. In a way, it is almost harder to play a slower song like this, catching all the nuances and making it work because you feel much more naked in a guitar trio situation.
It just starts with a simple G major chord that everybody learns in their first guitar lesson but then you find this constant but subtle tension building. Pat switches gears by jumping from eighth notes to sixteenth notes, plays triplets, uses phrases in the right moment and climaxes with chord work at the end of the solo. It’s just so tastefully done and on top of that, it’s all improvised!
Now if you are considering learning a Pat Metheny Solo or this specific solo we are going to cover now, I would highly recommend getting the official score that is published by Hal Leonard.
As I have mentioned in my previous videos there a quite a few mistakes in there that I think are crucial for you to be able to play this smoothly at some point. Nevertheless, I would recommend getting this and it’s really kind of mandatory if you really want to get deeper into Pat’s style. My mission with you here is that you can spot these mistakes by yourself, and understand his technique a little better so that once you get the book these mistakes will kind of autocorrect themselves.
Now you shouldn’t really encounter any technical difficulties for the first 25 bars of the solo but you will find a ton of chances to implement all these guidelines I talked about in my technique videos. There are long stretches at the beginning where you can try out to invert your picking directions and you will find some hammer-ons from nowhere.
So let’s maybe just go through a few bars where you can apply all of this. And let’s pick some bars from the score where it’s actually not indicated and written out like I think he does it. So that you can see what I mean and that you can do this by yourself in the future.
And it starts already at the very beginning or pick up of the solo. We just descend the G mixolydian scale which we could already invert. But when you reach the end of G7, you would have to start using hammer-ons from nowhere:
If you don’t hammer the lower notes, this would be almost impossible to catch. After that, you are back in A minor pentatonic land and you can switch back to upstrokes.
By the way, playing a simple A minor pentatonic over an Fmaj7 chord is something that you will find Pat playing in his solos all over the place since day one of his career. It’s beautiful, timeless, effective, and easy, and something you should try out over a simple backing track. So basically just playing a minor pentatonic from the major 3rd of the given Major chord. I might do a separate blog on this at some point but again I don’t want to get into the scale and note choices too much otherwise we would get too much off-topic. So let’s get back to technique.
Right after that the chord progression picks up and gets busier. And what’s interesting to notice is that Pat just reverts back to simple triads here and there. I think people would be surprised how triadic his solos actually are.
Here I am talking about the Note choices again but it’s just too interesting to notice. So let’s get back to technique again.
I guess you can play almost everything in here the opposite way, since this is really not that busy except for the E major triad in there. I don’t have any visual proof of this but I am pretty sure he would invert his right hand for this phrase.
Now when you get to around bar 15-25 you will find long stretches of just Dm and Fm, so the chord progression relaxes here for a second. And this is the perfect example of one of our guidelines of “using upstrokes for melodious passages”:
Everything is very singable, mostly onone string and nothing busy. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this is not all plucked with upstrokes. Also, don’t forget to slide all the way up after a finished phrase and musical statement which Pat does a lot!
And then he descends again on one string. Still, everything is plucked upwards and also ends up as a little motive:
But when you get to around bar 25 you will need a few more tricks in your arsenal to play this smoothly. Or a little bit more information than the original score will provide you:
The first notes sound very accented on the recording so I would assume these are all up. But at the end of this we have the classic descending thirds lick where you would have to hammer on from nowhere all the lower notes. The score usually tells you to pick all of these which I would highly doubt. So hammer the lower notes of these note groupings and you should be cool catching this phrase.
Just a few bars later you will need the inverted picking again. Only attack the upbeats and slur, hammer, and pull-off as much as you can.
Again the original score tells you to pick everything which I think is impossible, so check this out, there is also a great lick for the Eb△7 chord:
Okay guys, we are around halfway through the solo. I hope you were able to get some value out of this lesson and I wish you a successful practice session. I will see you in part II of the “At Last You’re Here” guitar solo analysis.
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