Hey YouTube mDecks Music here and welcome to our series on Pat Metheny. If you haven't done so
already, we strongly recommend you check out our first video of the series "...if you don't know who he
is, well here's a taste of what his music sounds like..." So today we'll start with a piece called
From This Place. We've taken the liberty of writing our own arrangement with some
reharmonizations, intro, outro and a couple of reinterpretations of the harmony and the
harmonic rhythm. All in the spirit of the series: analysis and composition, and it sounds like this...
We've chosen to start our series with this particular song
for many reasons. First, it's a beautiful piece, but most importantly it's very tonal, which
will allow us to focus on some principles without having to leave tonality altogether.
As we said in our previous video, Matheny's harmony is mostly post-tonal, meaning it still
holds many of the elements from tonality but the key center is constantly shifting.
There are many ways to achieve this moving target effect. Pat Metheny usually builds
his music based on three essential musical principles: consonants, emergence and ambiguity!
So why is this piece so beautiful?! Because it's consonant! Why is it consonant? Because it follows
one of the most important principles in music: the interval between the bass and the melody is
number one, and the third or the sixth offer the most balanced consonants in music. Bach knew this,
The Beatles knew this and Pat Metheny knows it as well. Why are thirds so beautiful? Well, they offer
just the right amount of tension, not too much and not too little. The perfect octave and the
perfect fifths are boring. It's only when we get into the fourth note of the overtone series
that we get enough tension to have something interesting going on. Now when we invert a
major third we get a minor sixth and when we invert a minor third we get a major sixth.
Since we perceive the base against the melody as the most important interval at any moment, then if
we make sure the base and the melody are a third or a sixth apart, we create beautiful harmonies.
If we look at our arrangement of From This Place, you can see that 98% of the voicings will follow this rule.
This is an essential rule to follow. Look at the first two measures of the theme, measures
six and seven in our score. I can just play the bass and melody and it'll sound very pretty...
So you'll see us using this technique across the entire song, which brings us to the next point:
inversions. Making the bass melody interval a third or a sixth causes the base to often move much more
than the harmony. Usually, the harmonic rhythm is based on a one or two chord per bar pattern,
but when the bass follows the melody, using this technique
will create lots of inversions. The first two notes in the melody are A and C over an F chord.
So F turns into F over A right away in the first measure. And yes, we are treating the upbeat notes
as either passing or leap tones and harmonizing only the downbeats most of the time. This
will ensure that the harmonic rhythm remains stable, which suits the mood of this piece.
Of course as we will see on the next video, Pat Metheny's treatment of consonants does
not end in the bass being a third or a sixth apart from the melody. There's much more to it
than just that. Let me show you a cool exercise that you can practice to develop this concept
even further. For now, and just for now, let's only consider notes from the F major scale...
Now I can play the scale in thirds like this...
or I can harmonize the A with a six below and I get this...
So there are two options: A with F or A with C. So if I have this melody...
I can play this...
or I can play this...
What if I switch in the middle from thirds to sixths...?
That sounds nice also, but now something new has emerged: harmonic implications.
This emergent property is essential for how this melody could further develop.
In the first two examples, using just thirds or sixths, a harmonic progression
did emerge but it wasn't as obvious. Plus we were concentrating on the intervals created
by the melody and the base. But now that I have mentioned harmony, your ears are
looking for cadences and a new property, the harmonic progression, starts to emerge...
and depending on your experience, ear training and musicianship,
you can start assigning entire harmonic functions to these bass melody pairings.
So, in the third example, we can now hear an authentic cadence: five six five to one...
and in the example where we shift from thirds to sixths
I can end the phrase in a 5 7 sus4 that wants to resolve to one like this...
So I'm actually providing a bunch of new harmony notes and harmonic functions that
were not there before. For example: I can now decide that the resolution of my 5 7
sus4 could be deceptive to the 6 minor, which is D minor in the current key of F...
I can leave the melody note on A but resolve the C on the bass to a D and then harmonize it with
the third above F. This creates an inner note that uses the consonants principle like this...
but now my ears are begging for the note E -- a third above C -- so that it resolves to a D and F...
So did the C7 sus4 change into an A minor over C? Or can i reinterpret it as a C7 13...
And this is where we have the opportunity to introduce the next concept: ambiguity.
By considering the different levels of emergent properties, we can introduce
ambiguity. Once I've decided to use a solid core principle, like consonants, many new properties,
such as harmonic implications, start appearing and we can shift between
considering the core level or the higher levels to take our music in new directions.
So on the last example, we introduced this E inner note. Now let's reinterpret this voicing as a new
emergent property. This is a very consonant voicing. Why? Well we have combined the third and the sixth
against the bass in one voicing. Now we have three voices that sound consonant. Forget that
this could be labeled as an A minor over C. As I showed you before this could also be a C7 13.
Right now, we're considering the voicing, not the chord name or the harmonic function. And this
is what will take us on a new path. I can take this voicing structure, a third and a six above
the base, and introduce it as soon as we switch to six on our original example. And we get this...
Which makes me wanna keep going up. A totally new direction is now available to us because
we reconsidered which emerging property to use. Of course you need to hear these implications.
So the more developed your ears are, the more emergent properties will appear!
And it's not about knowing the names of these properties: deceptive cadence, harmonic functions,
secondary dominance, C7 13 and so on. These are just labels! You may know all of these things by other
names or without any names at all. Either way it's all a consequence of your experience as a musician.
How many gigs you've played, how much music you've listened to, how many songs you know or how many
solos you transcribed. Everything that you've done counts! The important concept in order to create
music like this is that you develop the ability to reconsider which basic or emergent property that
you're prioritizing at different moments in your composition. And by the way this voicing -- C E A -- is a
very guitar friendly voicing. The spacing between the notes is very easy to play on the guitar.
This is also a nice way of voicing these notes on the piano to make it sound like a guitar chord.
As a way of getting used to this sound, I suggest the following: choose a major scale...
start by playing notes from the scale at random in thirds and then switch to tenths...
next play it in sixths and then in thirteenths...
and most importantly, get used to these sounds. Actively listen to what's
happening and really let it sink in. Then improvise by shifting from thirds to sixth,
introduce inner voicings and let your ears dictate where you want to go...
Then, look for interesting voicings by adding inner notes from a 10th or 13th between the bass and the melody...
Join us next time as we expand on all of these concepts while also introducing other
concepts like: add nine chords, constant or parallel structures, pentatonic substructures
and more. Like, subscribe, comment, hit the bell and we'll catch you next time.
Thank for watching :)