Guitar Etudes: Warmup
Exercises for Guitar
Pat Metheny
Hal Leonard
The process for warming up before a gig
or practice session is different for everyone.
Depending on your strengths and weaknesses,
it might even change everyday. Jazz
guitarist Pat Metheny recently released a
book of guitar etudes that outlines what
his typical pre-gig routine entails. During
a summer tour of Italy in 2010, Metheny
set up a small recorder, documented his
process, and then transcribed 14 improvised
pieces to create this book.
Each etude is presented in both tab and
standard notation without any commentary
or direction from the author. Since these are
improvised, they are looser in format than a
typical etude book. Each exercise flows freely
between various keys and scales, and in
some cases time signatures. Metheny’s goal
here was to demonstrate how to move freely
around the instrument without becoming
locked into a specific idea.
When you play through these etudes,
you really get a sense of how Metheny
views the fretboard and connects ideas. In
“Exercise 10 (Pescara),” you can see how
a master improviser can take a simple G
major triad and turn it into a melodic
string-skipping exercise that moves through
several different keys and patterns. The
majority of the exercises focus on moving
around the fretboard and connecting ideas
with a series of eighth-notes. A few are
presented with
some direction
when it comes to
the picking hand,
but most are left
without any indication
of tempo
or feel. This
addition could
add to the effectiveness
of the
etudes because everyone thinks, articulates,
and plays differently at various tempos.
Nearly any guitarist will be able to cherry-pick
a few ideas from
Guitar Etudes, but
for Metheny fans this will be the next best
thing to sitting in his practice room before
a gig.