Getting Started with Arpeggios for Lead Guitar

when I first started playing guitar I remember doing homework on arpeggios and being generally confused on the entire topic um for a long time for an embarrassingly long time I believe that uh arpeggios were just this and that's it there was another no other definition of arpeggio other than sweeping up and down like that um so I want to clear up a little confusion on what an arpeggio is and what we can do with him as a guitar player besides just sweeping them which is fun but it's not always that uh practical so long story short an arpeggio are just is just the notes of a chord played one at a time so this is an a major chord I'm playing a bar chord on the fifth fret that's the chord the arpeggio is this just the notes going up one at a time this is also the a major arpeggio if I do this that's an extra C sharp in there that we don't normally play when we're playing the bar chord and a high C sharp on top so this is an arpeggio shape I want to start with because I think it's pretty simple to practice uh and it's movable so right now we're in a if I move it up to a sharp I'm all of a sudden playing the notes of an a sharp major chord if I move it to B I'm all of a sudden playing the notes of the B major chord and so on uh now the entire uh shape is good to know you want to be practicing the entire shape but for me personally when I'm playing solos it's very rare that I end up playing an entire uh arpeggio shape I usually end up using little tiny bits of it um so what I mean by that is if I look at just the highest notes of this arpeggio right here up here on the ninth fret and the fifth fret and the fifth fret and then the sixth fret right here these notes right here are the notes I'm probably going to be using if I'm in the middle of a solo over an a major chord probably not going to be down here I'm probably just going to focus on these high notes to help out one line that chord and then likewise I want to show you this uh B minor arpeggio we're going to start on the seventh fret be a B minor chord right here and the arpeggio shape that we want to practice goes like this these are sweepable shapes too if you want to practice doing this the sweeping up and down but really what I want you to focus on is just the high notes Here maybe down to the fourth string all right we'll work on all the notes of the arpeggio from the fourth string and on like that and already you can hear the chord kind of being formed the chord progression being formed just by me playing these two shapes back and forth like that you can actually hear the a major chord and the B minor chord even though I'm not playing chords I'm just playing arpeggios so uh the first application of arpeggios um I think the easiest one is to just play the arpeggio over the chord the chord progression we're jamming along to uh it goes a major to B minor so what I'm going to do is I'm going to play a little bit of my a major shape and I think I'll just do these three strings right here like that and then for B minor I'll do the same thing I'll go over to my B minor shape and I'll just play these three strings of the B minor shape now this will be less of a guitar solo and more of a guitar line uh I want to back up the rhythm guitar I don't want to be doing some flashy solo I just kind of want to slip in there and and be part of the background music without being uh you know out front and center and arpeggios are great for that um if you're picking through them one at a time like that um or even skipping around uh you can get some really nice uh layers in the middle of a jam so this will be less of a solo and more of like an addition to a Jam track um and I want you to hear what that sounds like once again I'm just doing the top three notes of an a major arpeggio and top three notes of a B minor arpeggio and I guess uh it's not the very highest notes the shape I showed you includes this note so I am skipping out I'm just doing these three notes and then for B minor I'm skipping out on the high note and I'm just doing these three notes all right let's hear what that sounds like one two three four foreign [Music] all right so it sounds pretty nice I mean it's not anything uh special I mean nobody's gonna you know jump out of their seats because of that but it works perfectly and I mean it should obviously work perfectly you're literally playing the notes of the chord in the background um it's really worth mentioning that all of your arpeggios come from chords so the stronger your chord theory is the stronger your your understanding of chords on the fretboard and how to get around chord inversions then obviously the stronger your arpeggios are going to be because they're all built off of that so uh I would advise if you're trying to get into arpeggios really start with chords go get all your chord Theory worked out first and then working on arpeggios is going to be infinitely easier because you already understand you know how they're built in the structure of them all so the next thing I want to talk about is still using the same shapes but uh what I like to do is once I have something that's movable I like to practice little things that get moved all around the neck whenever I'm in a different key or in a different chord shape for example the highest three notes of this arpeggio right here nine five and five from my a major that is a really easy little pattern to get fast at if I do a pull off with an upstroke and then if I do a down stroke stroke on the second string like that I can play those as triplets or eighth notes or 16th notes and I can get a lot of speed out of it that way and it'll match the chord perfectly that move is translatable to my second arpeggio B minor so I can do the same move the pull off here to that note and then come down to my first finger and I've talked about these moves in other videos but now we're applying them to arpeggios instead of scales just to make sure it matches our chord even better so uh for this next little Jam I'm just going to show you what it sounds like to play an arpeggio with this little trick over the a chord and then for the B minor chord the same little thing right there and I'll try in a few different rhythmic Cycles we'll try like eighth notes triplets and maybe 16th notes if I can pull it off and we'll hear what that sounds like one two three [Music] now triplets [Music] all right so I'm not going to try doing 16th notes there that's just not going to happen but you can hear uh how nice that sounds as far as like uh you know fitting into the core and having something fast to up your sleeve ready to play definitely don't do it for the whole show it sounds completely annoying if you're just gonna do that all day um but definitely little bits and pieces it's very practical uh and then the last thing I want to show you here is connecting these arpeggio shapes to scale shapes that you've already practiced um what I'm trying to do is find out if I'm in the key of a major which I am in this Jam track I'm trying to think where is the rest of the scale because I don't want to just hang out on the arpeggio that's boring it sounds very Bland if all you're doing is outlining the chord the real Joy from a solo comes from uh resting on those notes of the arpeggio that sound good and stable and then venturing out and going to some weird you know colorful notes and coming back to those notes that sit really well and uh you know are comfortable to hang out on so if you're just hanging out on those Comfort zones the entire time there's just no interest in your solos so that's why it's important to know the rest of the scale and how it feel it's in to the arpeggio shape that you're using so the shape that I'm using is a locrian shape I think of it as a low green shape three notes per string and it looks like this all right and the reason I like that shape is because if I'm playing my arpeggio like this up to the pinky then I can just come down my scale shape like that and I basically have this beautiful little transition up the arpeggio and down uh my scan I can do the same thing here with a major shape if I play my B minor arpeggio right here I'm going to use this shape to complete my a major scale and this is actually a very common a major change during a major shape but once again it connects very well into my B minor arpeggio so what I'll be trying to do this time is I'll be trying to play up arpeggios and coming down the scale going up the arpeggio and down the scale you could obviously do this in Reverse come down the arpeggio and up the scale down the arpeggio and up the scale but uh this is about as simple as it gets as far as combining these things together I'm just starting with an arpeggio down the scale starting with an arpeggio down the scale it'll sound really good and I think it's a nice little trick you can start adding into your solos as soon as you start learning arpeggio shapes so let's take a listen to that one two three foreign thank you [Music] all right so you hear that I mean uh everything's gonna work just perfectly as I'm coming up the arpeggio and it's going to sound sweet and right in tune and then I can kind of do anything I want uh you know down the scale but one thing I would recommend now that we're kind of uh you know familiar with the notes of the chord being played in the background I would advise if you're going to hang out on a note if you're going to let something ring out for a substantial period of time make it one of those notes in the arpeggio it's very easy to start sounding uh bad even if you're in the scale and if you're in the right shape and you're using the right arpeggios if you're uh hanging out on notes that aren't part of the chord you can get into a little trouble that way so uh you get a lot of benefit from practicing these arpeggios not only do they sound good not only are they better for strengthening your theory and moving around the fretboard but uh you're just going to be more familiar with um the notes that are safe you know the notes that you can really uh start on and end on even small phrases it makes a big difference if you're starting and ending on the right phrase the right note uh there your phrase will just sound better and it takes a long time to uh to apply these techniques but you've got to start somewhere and I hope this is a good starting point for you so thank you for watching

Channel: Signals Music Studio

Views: 197,399

Keywords: free lesson, guitar lesson, guitar lessons, arpeggios, arpeggio, sweeping lesson, how to play solos, jake lizzio, dole mansion, crystal lake, signals music, signals music studio, calming teacher

Id: tnwCnkYHv9U

Length: 9min 37sec (577 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 03 2017