Lesson

Note: Example tune is All The Things You Are, I only played part of the melody.

Check out how important dynamics are in separating the melody line from the accompaniment. It's especially noticeable in the first 8 measures of the tune.

just a quick application comment...

this line is quartal vocabulary (or fourthy vocabulary hahaha).

it's a quartal chord just in an inversion. If you made C# the bottom note voiced... C#, F#, B, E you would have stacked 4ths.

where to play this? Well it could be...

Emaj giving you scale degrees 13-9-5-1
Amaj (3-13-9-5)
Dmaj (7-3-13-9)
C#minor (1, 11, 7, 3)
F#minor (5-1-11-7)
Bminor (9-5-1-11)
E7 (13-9-5-1)
Bb7alt (#9-b13-b9-#11)

I'm sure I left a few out. But do you guys see how it fits into all of those chords?

Simple Etude. Play F# B C# E up and down your instrument. Try it fast. Hard right? I think of these as asymmetrical arpeggios.

Just do that for a few weeks and then come back to it, every now and then. I just did it yesterday and I sucked at it! Your turn!

Pat Metheny once said in an interview that playing arpeggios is great for your technique because they make you move quickly up and down your instrument. This etude gets you playing over the entire three octaves and will sharpen your accuracy. Choose your sticking carefully. Try out different combinations until you find the one that works for you.

I like to play it "dry" so I can hear each note separately, but you can add some pedaling if you like. Doing that will make the piece sound fuller.