Basic Arpeggio Construction for Simple Sweep Arpeggios.
The first thing to know is that an arpeggio isnt just a guitar technique. Its basically just a chord whose notes are played individually. its just that the great shred players took it to another level to create very melodic solo lines and whatnot. In essence, its just playing a lot of chords really fast with individual notes. Well, we've all seen the basic sweep arpeggio lessons on the internet with the same old shapes and whatnot. How do you make your own though? and how do they fit together? We'll see.
We'll start out with a basic chord. C Major. Our chord is constructed (For chord construction, see previous post).
So our notes, then are C, G, and E. well, we can play that a number of ways. We can:
Tap it:
E-t15p8h12-t15p12p8-------
B-------------------------
G-------------------------
D-------------------------
A-------------------------
E-------------------------
B-------------------------
That is basically, a 1 string arpeggio. Easy,right?
Well, we can make it a bit different. Here it is as a 2 string arpeggio.
E-15p12---15p12-----------
B------13------13---------
G-------------------------
D-------------------------
A-------------------------
E-------------------------
B-------------------------
3 string:
E-----------12h15---------
B---------13--------------
G------12-----------------
D---10--------------------
A-------------------------
E-------------------------
B-------------------------
Pretty straight foward concept. you just basically link the notes of a triad. To utilize our favorite instruments, take a look at one of my favorite arpeggios, the 7 string Minor shape(just one of many 7 string minor shapes though):
E-----------------13h17t22p17p13-----------------------------
B---------------15--------------15---------------------------
G-------------14------------------14-------------------------
D----------15-----------------------15-----------------------
A-----12h17---------------------------17p12------------------
E---13-------------------------------------13----------------
B-15-----------------------------------------15--------------
If you notice, its a cycle of the same 3 notes -- D, F,A,D,F,A,D,F,A....
The cool thing about arpeggios is you can click them together really easy to form a chord progression.This is very useful when actually soloing over a chord progression because your chosen notes are guaranteed to fit. You can also cram a lot of them together for some neat solo runs. Take a look at this:
E-7p3----3h7s8----5s10p7---7--12-8--------12------------
B-----5-5-----7-7-------8-8---------10--10----------------
G------4-------5---------7-------------9-------------------
D-----------------------------------------------------------
A-----------------------------------------------------------
E-----------------------------------------------------------
B-----------------------------------------------------------
Its just an E Minor, F# half diminished, G Maj, and A minor. Just chained together.
A Lot of people like to just use one big arpeggio shape after another, which can sound a bit repetitive. Whats really cool to do, is use them Francesco Fareri style - that is, to change the arpeggio as you run up the fret board in a progression.
It works best when the chords are have at least one similar note. Lets take an Aminor, C Majr, E Minor progression. This will work really well, cause the A Minor chord is made of an A , a C, and a E note. A C Majr is a C E G, and a E Minor, thats E G B. They'll fit together very nicely.
Amin C Maj E Minor
E--------|------|7-12-7---------------------
B--------|----8-|------8--------------------
G--------|5-9---|--------9------------------
D-------7|------|---------9-----------------
A-----7--|------|-----------10-7------------
E-5-8----|------|---------------------------
B-------------------------------------------
These take a bit of work and plan and get to down to a science, so they're not exactly something to start off with, and the fignerings can get weird as hell.. But these are definately the coolest part of doing arpeggios.
I encourage everyone to ask questions, it'll make this more complete and clear up anything that might be confusing