Arpeggio E Minor

[Baudilio Eliason]

Theillustration below shows the notes of the Am chord. The notes that make up the Am chord are A, C and E. When you play the notes of a chord individually, they are called arpeggios. If you played all 3 notes at once, it would be an Am chord. A good exercise is to pick the notes of a chord separately without strumming them. You can build melodies off of the individual notes of the chord.

Arpeggios on guitar are when the notes of a chord are played individually one after the other. Arpeggios provide a framework for targeting chord tones and can be used to add a bit of color to guitar solos and fills. They are also quite popular in metal and neoclassical styles of music when played with a sweeping technique.

From this chord shape, we can build a major arpeggio. Since arpeggios are played one note at a time, we can complete this arpeggio by grabbing the major 3rd on the 5th string and adding it to the barre chord.

The diagrams below give you the CAGED major arpeggio shapes, the chord shapes from which they are derived, and the suggested fingering for playing each shape. Use the fingerings as a guide and feel free to adjust as necessary.

When playing through the guitar arpeggios, start with the lowest root note and play ascending and descending, finishing on the same root note in which you started. Each arpeggio includes a tab to follow.

The D shape arpeggio is built from the D form chord, but also includes three additional notes; the 3rd on the 6th string, 5th on the 5th string, and 3rd on the 3rd string. This shape is very awkward to play in its full form and frequently you see just the 5th, root, and 3rd played on strings 1-3.

In the tab/audio below, the whole scale is played first, followed by just the root, 3rd, and 5th of each scale. Listen to the examples to hear the difference the 3rd scale degree makes between major and minor.

The Am shape arpeggio begins with the same root note as the C shape, the root on the 5th string. However, instead of playing it with the pinky finger, you use your index finger. This moves your positioning down and creates the A shape instead of the C shape.

The root of the Em shape is shared with the root of the Gm shape. Similar to the Am & Cm shapes, the root of the Em is played with the index finger, shifting the position down the fretboard and creating a new arpeggio shape.

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Close related to the Minor Scales are these arpeggios, based on minor triads (three-note chords).

The patterns shown in the diagrams below can be played all over the keyboard and with both hands. The general fingerings are (right hand ascending): 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. To accomplished this the thumb goes under the hand to the next octave and the long finger is used as pivot finger.

A Minor arpeggio from root over two octaves and ending on the root on third octave:

For those who want to learn or revise all the minor arpeggios, all minor arpeggio diagrams and videos are complied here. The arpeggios here are not arranged by order of difficulty, but rather in a chronological order. If you would like to them according to the order of difficulty, please refer to the graded syllabus.

In harmonic minor, when the harmony goes to the Major V chord (Dominant), you can play a diminished seventh arpeggio starting on the raised seventh scale degree of the key. So, if you are in A minor and and the Major V comes up (E major) you can play diminished arpeggios starting on a g#.

Yeah, you can derive these 4 ducklings from 4 different b9 dominants. The way I usually use them is thinking about that one particular dominant and starting the diminished run from its 3, 7, 5 or 9, so the meme is compatible with my way of doing things.

We can also reverse it in a way that diminished chord is duck mom and 4 dominants are the ducklings, makes sense from the perspective of enharmonic modulation in classical music theory.

Welcome back everyone! I hope everything is well. This time I'm going to give you some fun arpeggio licks that I use in my playing and hope that you will learn from them and make up your own arpeggio licks. Be sure you follow the fingerings above the notation. Let's get started...

Example 1 - We have four arpeggios in the key of C major on the first three strings. The first arpeggio is a C major (C, E, G), the second one is a B diminished (B, D, F), the third one is an A minor (A, C, E), and the last one is a G Major (G, B, D). These are some of my favorite arpeggio shapes; you can really get these flying up and down the neck. I don't use sweep picking for these - I alternately pick the notes and use a pull-off on the first string. Make sure you move these shapes around the neck to different keys.

This wraps up our lesson. If you have any questions feel free to email me. Also check out my CDs "Full Circle" and "Total Freedom", and for more information visit www.mikecampese.com. In the next lesson we are going to talk about learning the neck - be sure to stop back. Good luck!

Mike Campese is an all-around music performer, session artist and teacher competent in many musical styles, electric and acoustic. He has studied at G.I.T. (Honors Graduate), and with Paul Gilbert, Norman Brown, Stanley Jordan, Scott Henderson and Keith Wyatt.

Now, if you know anything about chords, you will know that a minor triad is formed when you take a major triad and lower the 3rd one half step. So in essence, all of these arpeggios are going to be the same thing as the major ones we learned before, but we are going to alter one note to make it a minor arpeggio.

This little exercise is going to combine the 2nd inversion major and minor arpeggios going through the harmonized D major scale. Don't worry about getting this down fast, just make sure the notes are played cleanly and accurately. (note: there is an arpeggio at the end that we didn't go through but don't worry about that one for now.)

This arpeggio is especially tricky to play because of the bar on the 9th fret across the top 3 strings. In order to make the "rolling" technique on this one work, you'll need to fret the G string note with the tip of your finger, using the fleshy underside of the finger to fret the B and E string notes. To execute the first roll, pick the G string. Then, as you go to pick the B string, arch the first knuckle of your barring finger and roll the finger in the direction of the sweep so that the tip of the finger mutes the G string. As you pick the E string, continue rolling the finger to mute the B string. If this is done the right way, the notes will sound separate and distinct. When performing the descending (upstroke) sweeps, roll your barring finger in the opposite direction.

In a previous lesson we took a brief look at lead guitar arpeggios. Arpeggios are very effective in lead guitar lines as they break up scale-based passages and add interest and variety to solos. This lesson will focus on minor arpeggios.

Arpeggios can be used in lead guitar solos in any kind of music. Rock and metal guitarists use arpeggios all the time, as do jazz guitarists. Even a blues guitar solo can be spiced up with some arpeggio licks. Example arpeggio-based blues licks are provided further down the page.

The following diagrams show movable minor arpeggio shapes. The root notes for each shape are shown as a blue circle. This means (for example) that if you position the blue notes in the diagram over G notes on the fretboard, the arpeggios produced will be G minor arpeggios.

Minor arpeggio shapes can be combined to create longer licks and lines. Below are two examples in notation and TAB. Picking directions have been included to show how sweep picking can be used to play arpeggios.

Sweep picking is a technique in which notes on two or more adjacent strings are played with one stroke of the pick. The pick is moved smoothly over the strings in one continuous movement. For example, the first four notes of Lick 1 below are all played with the same downward stroke.

When sweep picking, only the note being picked should be allowed to sound. The fretting fingers should be positioned ready to play the notes, but should only allow the string to ring when they are picked. If the notes are allowed to overlap, the effect will be lost and the line will just sound like a chord being strummed.

We hope that you found this lesson useful, and are experimenting with arpeggios in your own lead lines. Don't forget to subscribe to Guitar Command for regular guitar news and articles. As usual, let us know what you think of this lesson in the comments below.

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You are much better off learning a snippet of a scale and to use an idea you can implement immediately in your improvising and soloing. Having a small idea you can practically use for arpeggio integration is much more powerful than having a theoretical idea you cannot actually play.

Play an A minor chord into your computer (or even your phone) and loop the A minor chord. Then improvise over your recording using this idea. While improvising, switch between playing the arpeggio and the scale.

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As you work through these arpeggios, play each one slowly, loudly, and deliberately at first to build strength and confidence in your fingers. Then play them faster and lighter, which better simulates the way arpeggios appear in real music. Just be sure to maintain your starting tempo and dynamic level (loudness) throughout each exercise.

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