Arpeggidiot
By
Fredrik Pihl ©
Hello
readers and welcome to my first column here on Shred Academy.
My first lesson will cover some different ways of playing arpeggios.
A lot of guitar players associate arpeggios with sweeping and
only sweeping. And they believe it is the actual sweeping that
makes the arpeggio. That however is not true. So first of all
I’m going to explain what an arpeggio really is, so there
won’t be any misunderstanding.
An
arpeggio is a chord that is being played one note at a time, often
with a staccato feel to it. You can play an arpeggio anyway you
want. Let’s say you take a basic five chord (root and the
fifth) and play them one note at a time. There you have an arpeggio.
You can play a C major chord one note at a time, and there you
have another arpeggio. So you don’t necessarily have to
sweep all notes in order to play an arpeggio. You can alternate
pick, hammer on and pull off, use your nose hair etc…..
Now
that you know what an arpeggio is, I hope this column will give
you some new ideas. Look upon these exercises as some suggestions,
and then come up with your own ideas. To make it easy I have done
all four exercises in the key of G or Gmaj7. I also made some
sound examples of each exercise, fast and slow.
Grab your guitar get ready for Arpeggidiot!!
Ex.
No1 is a Gmaj7 chord being played by using legato and tapping.
It also involves some string skipping, so you have to be sure
to mute the strings that you are not playing. I don’t use
my pick at all for this pattern. I hammer on all the notes, and
use my right hands middle finger for the tapping.
Start slowly and bring it up to speed, or else you won’t
sound like a guitar hero and people will start throwing bottles
at you. And remember to mute! Thank you.
Ex
No2 is a variation of the first pattern. This lick has a more
outside sound to it. This also involves string skipping and 2
finger tapping on the right hand.
Here
is how I do it: I play the15th fret on the b-string with my right
hands middle finger, then I hammer on with my ring finger on the
17:th fret on the e-string. Then back with my middle finger on
the15:th fret on the b-string. If you’re not familiar with
this technique it takes a while to get used to it. But just start
of slowly and increase your speed when you comfortable.
Ex
No3 is a different kind of arpeggio. This time I use 4 notes per
string just to show you that you don’t have to play 1 or
2 notes per string. This exercise involves string skipping, tapping
and also some pretty wide stretches for your left hand. So be
careful and don’t hurt yourself. Make sure that you are
warmed up before attempting this pattern.
Play all notes using legato. I use patterns like this in my playing
a lot. You can play wide intervals in a fluid way that sounds
very tasteful. At least that’s what I think. Try and see
if you can some up with some similar exercises like this one.
Alright…
In example No 3 I mentioned wide intervals, so let’s have
a look at the last exercise that contains even wider intervals.
On this lick I basically use the same technique as in the second
exercise. The biggest difference is just that the notes are more
spread out. Look at the transcription to find out where I use
the tapping in this one.
Well,
I hope you found these exercises useful and inspiring. If you
have any questions or comments feel free to send me an email,
and I’ll get back to you as quick as possible.
Until next time… cheers!
You
can email any questions directly to Fredrik Pihl at mail@fredrikpihl.com
