Arpeggios

This month Andy Saphir concludes his look at arpeggios by introducing some bigger shapes for a wider range of notes and some very cool sounds.

The shapes we’re looking at this time utilise both lower and higher strings, moving through two octaves and giving you a shape that covers more fretboard area. These bigger arpeggio shapes are great to learn as they not only give you more scope for longer arpeggio lines, but also represent a larger visual ‘foot print’ (or should we say hand print?) which helps you to visualise a fuller picture of potential notes that are available in a certain fretboard position. Bearing this in mind, however, from a musical perspective, you don’t necessarily have to use the full shape every time – mixing shorter arpeggio lines with scale based lines can sound really good, and remember to practise the exercises in different keys so you don’t only recognise the shapes in one location on the fretboard.