ExAMplES MIXOLYDIAN 7TH ARPEGGIOS

EXAMPLE 1 The bulk of this lesson’s musical examples are devoted to exploiting various inversions of the parental a7 arpeggio. We start off with a 1-2 configuration on the top two strings. Interestingly, we are only using three notes from each inversion. Can you work out which note is missing out in each beat or shape? Bar 2 starts off by travelling straight up and down a oneoctave root position a7 arpeggio in CaGed shape #5 of a Mixolydian (vertical motion). This example then finishes off with some typically bluesy Mixolydian phrasing using various tone-wide bends.

EXAMPLE 2 Here, the truncated a7 arpeggio forms in example 1 are extended via the addition of the third string to produce a 1-1-2 note configuration over three strings that provides all four notes required for each arpeggio inversion. The pick-strokes indicate how I played the recorded example; however, some players (like Yngwie), would play each note on the third string in bar 5 using a downstroke, not an upstroke. The line concludes in bar 6 with a descending passage that’s based mainly around an edited form of the a7 arpeggio shape that exists with CaGed shape #4 of a Mixolydian (another example of vertical motion) before sliding down to an a root note at the 7th fret of the third string.

EXAMPLE 3 next, the a7 shapes from example 2 are extended even further by