Download Pat Metheny Guitar Etudes - Warmup Exercises For Guitar eBook

I may be out on a limb here but I don't think Metheny's intention is for people to learn and play these pieces note-for-note - the most obvious hint of that is the omission of an included or downloadable recording. For a guy who routinely allows publishing of transcriptions and scores it would just be too inconsistent. Reedling in-between the lines of his preface I think he's got something else in mind and it assumes a certain maturity on the player's part and a self-awareness of one's learning style.

From a technical standpoint, one way to view 'Guitar Etudes' is as a rolling thesaurus of Pat's picking technique and applications of it to
the raw material of improvisation. While you may not find many of his 'licks' per se in these pages, you may come to recognize the landscape and soil they germinate from. And that's the first step to appreciate how improbable it would be, without the ability to spin these lines freely and consciously, for the vocabulary Pat crafts from them to arise spontaneously during actual playing.

For me, that's primarily what's revealed here. Musically, the etudes are by-and-large diatonic 'vanilla' streams of steady eighth notes and triplets in scalar and wide-interval forms that, while technically challenging, don't do justice to Pat's colorful sense of harmony and rhythmic subtlety - but that's not the point here.

What I would suggest is playing loosely through these pieces and allowing yourself to be drawn to smaller segments you then isolate and use as jumping off points to problem-solve and expand your technique (write your own etudes) or develop the segments into musical phrases of your own, integrated with your own vocabulary.

From that point of view, I found a lot here - but unlike many books it's not laid out in small-bite exercises. I think Pat assumes players approaching this book have travelled the path awhile and can reflect upon what they need to advance their playing. He's just presenting himself as a fellow traveller and giving a glimpse into his practice routine at some of the solutions he's come up with.

Buy this book. Now. Especially if you're an experienced player. The overwhelming positive reviews speak for themselves. There are endless nuggets of gold for those of us looking for new ideas for your melodic sequence playing (Metheny, as you know, is a bonafide master of this). Intended for the experienced player, though. Some less than positive reviews complained that there are no chord symbols to provide context. Quite true. Again, the experienced player won't need them. Each etude is written in a particular key; G, Bb, Ab, etc.. An etude with #'s and b's shows the outside harmony. Simple, really. There are also no fingerings (i.e. 1,2,3,4). No worries for the experienced player, right? Do you expect the book to play them for you? (!) Challenging? Yes. But you expected this, right? Buy it now. Clear out you woodshed (and your calendar). A lifetime of study. But, of course, all the greats are.

This is incredible. Don't expect to have a blast playing them but the exercises are excellent and quite musical. They will help you have a feel for soloing and improving. Highly recommended.

This being the first guitar/music technique book I have purchased in a long time, I am so far pretty pleased. The dude bitching about the fact that there are no chord symbols, straight 8ths,etc, needs to get over it. The fact that these are all improvised warm up exercises that Metheny does is pretty remarkable; indeed, some sound very Bach-ian in their structure and while, yes, not having chord symbols to analyze the use of the scale or chord being played can kind be kind of frustrating (i.e."this is a G major 7 arpeggio; is this really supposed to BE GMaj7 or is it Em9", etc.) if you listen (while you are playing through them) to what is played before and after then I think that anyone with enough years of playing as well as a solid foundation of basic harmony under their belt can come to their own conclusions about what is being played and in what harmonic context. Like he says at the beginning: these are basic ideas (for him) that might start off in one key (if any) and spin their way through others before ending. What more needs to be said other than that? Besides if one is harmonically advanced enough then THEY can come up with their OWN chord progressions! This might actually be more fun!
The tab is quite an improvement over the other PM solo books ("Bright Size Life", for one). Not only is the font larger (BSL is way too small), the finger placement - while they might seem a little unorthodox - certainly seems to make more sense. Besides if you have ever watched Pat play, his technique is pretty unorthodox anyway.
Because I despise trying to read TAB and standard notation at the same time, I like to first read the regular notation and just play it how I would normally do it and then, if I have a question about how to execute a certain passage, I'll check the TAB to see if maybe something can be played a little easier or more efficient.
Overall, this is a good book. It's just what I have needed to get me out of my stale practice routines and has even inspired me to come up with some of my own etudes. It also a great way (besides transcribing improvised solos on tunes) to see what makes Metheny "tick" musically and how he warms up before a gig.
I also think that this goes along very well with Pat Martino's "Linear Expressions". These too are also etude-like but are intended to show how Martino uses his famous "minor-ization" technique over various chord changes, in all positions of the neck. No TAB however so, if you can't read, don't bother. However, if you can't read then what are you waiting for??
Now, if only John Scofield would come out with something similar...

Great Product!

A Metheney exercise a day keeps the doctor away!

These are more than just warm up exercises. It takes a lot of work play these fluidly but when you do the melodic content is simply beautiful.