Arpeggios | 10 Levels | Beginner to Pro

[Music] [Music] alpos are one of the coolest tools we can utilize to create the sounds of chord changes in our improvisation or to create very melodic sound and ideas and say things like our composition too but often guitarists struggle to get past just learning big shapes in today's lesson I want to walk through 10 levels of how we can visualize our pedos and construct them in a slightly different way where we are focusing more on intervals and using them as a framework rather than just learning hundreds of different shapes now it's worth pointing out that

today's sponsor is music bro music bro is an online educational platform where there are hundreds of courses and lessons based around things like improvisation but also there are mixing mastering composition and production lessons over there from a so if you are interested in all of these examples today in PDF format plus two extra levels then please do check out music brow straight after this video it's worth pointing Nows as well that all of my courses on my website are currently 40% off using the coupon code bf40 that includes the new improvisation road map part two

and things like threo visualization and music theory and Harmony from scratch to Pro which will tie in very nicely to a lot of the examples in this video now quick spoiler alert before we go into level one despite the fact that these are called level one to 10 I would say there is no real way to define each of these kind of levels when it comes to guitar I would say that all of these examples are things that you could practice for months maybe even years before they start to solidify in your visualization and your

memory with these things I do have a whole 10 level series on YouTube there's things like hyper pick and there is a Triads video which you might want to check out as well but remember don't feel like these are going to be quick fixes I always think that nowadays especially with the likes of YouTube guitar lessons a lot of people try and make out that there's some quick fix and they're forgetting that in reality it takes years of practice to get good with a lot of Concepts and especially when it comes to seeing this fretboard

it's not like a piano always remember that okay without further Ado let's go with into level one then so in level one all we want to do is look at how we actually construct our ped so most of you out there probably already know this basic C major chord now if you were to play those notes individually or how I just played them then we could say that those notes have been arpeggiated therefore creating an arpeggio but if you play them all together then I would say that that is just a chord or the Triad

in this case but essentially we need to look deeper and look at how we can construct the arpeggio so in order to do that we need to look at all of this in terms of the intervals so if I take a basic C major scale if I label that in terms of intervals I get 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and then we're back to one now to build the arpeggio in this Triad form we need the one three and five and there we have it that is essentially the formula now an Aledo tends

to be built in what we call Stacked thirds and you don't really need to worry too much about that but a way of doing this easily is to take the scale and basically we take one note so we take one we skip the second we take the third skip the fourth and then we take the fifth so the rule is like take one Skip One take one Skip One and there we have 1 3 5 and that is essentially it that is how we build our arpeggio if we're looking at it as kind of a

Triad now level two would be being able to play these Triads regardless of the root note so I am looking intervalic always for a root so we could take the one on the low E string and then I look for three and five I take that one again 135 I take the root on the D string 135 I take the root on the G string 135 take the root on the B string 135 and then if I was to do this on another string so say the E then all I'm going to do is do

it as a single string idea so 1 three five so essentially there I have all all of my arpeggios in Triad form by just viewing this intervalic structure really and you should be able to see what these look like in relation to that root nose at all times now if this is something that you are interested in then definitely check out my freto visualization course that's available on music bro or as a download on my website where we cover how we can construct these in different ways and I actually further expand that into how we

can construct it regardless of which which finger we start on which is a very important way of visualizing these but anyway without further Ado let's move on then to level three okay so in level three we're going to continue this concept of Triad based arpeggios and by that that just means that we've got three notes at the moment we are going to expand later on in some of the lasater levels but essentially we're going to look at all the other available AR pedos and there's not that many hintin so the first one which we should

look at is is going to be our minor arpedio or the Minor triad so essentially to construct one of these it's super easy if you're viewing these in terms of intervals all we have to do is take the 135 but the three is going to be flattened all that means is it's taken down a half step so all of the arpeggio Triads that you learned before all you would do is take that third and lower it by one fret essentially moving that down a half step so we get a minor third instead so we go

to C and we get this instead of the major third we're going to flatten it so it becomes this note and then we play the five so we've got if you're viewing this in terms of intervals that is super easy considering that all of those shapes that we did for the major Triads all we have to think is that one note has been lowered so if I go to that E string route it's the same shape just lower that third same on the D string same on the G and the B string same on the

B string and then for that final challenge where I'd say is do it on a single string essentially that is it how easy is that it's worth pointing out that on the G and the B string you always have to be careful the shape looks slightly different than it does on any of the other string sets and that is because we are not tuned in for guys like Tom Quail my old teacher this is where his system is amazing because it always looks the same just means you can't play open chords like this you know

so that is kind of the fundamental structure of how I view these Triads now the other two Triads that we've got are actually super easy and not as useful maybe for the intermediate kind of players or beginner players but let's just cover them anyway we have diminished and to get a diminished arpeggio all you need to think is we take that minor aredo the one flat 3 five and this time we flatten the five so if you think this is where the five was all you do is lower that by a half step so now

we've got one flat three flat five easy we could do it here we could do it here we could do it here we could do it here and then you just have to think here and that is it the other Triad based aredo that we can build It's the final one is going to be an augmented Triad and again for beginners and intermediates this is probably not as useful but it's definitely worth knowing if you are like a more advanced player and all an augmented Triad is or an arpeggio is we take the one the

major third and this time we have a raised fifth so raised just means sharpened or taken up a half step on guitard that just means take it up one fret so if I take a c augmented Triad I get one major third and then the sharp five so [Music] this should remember it's stand of the volume but we could do that from every root note as [Music] well and there we have it they are B basically the four arpeggio shapes that you really need if you're going to use Triads now obviously we've just looked at

that from constructing it from the first finger from each route like I said in the previous level definitely check out freto visualization my course if you're looking to further expand on that and a different way of viewing them but essentially you should always be visualizing these other intervals as part of the arpedio against the nearest rout note that we are next to so in level four what we want to do is look at going both ascending and descending because that is something that is often neglected so all I'm going to do is take a C

major Triad or aredo that we played before and go up to the octave and then descend this is one thing that a lot of guitarists tend to neglect we tend to only Ascend or Ascend through these arpegios and we get this kind of sound people often forget that it's a good idea to practice them the other way you should be able to construct these regardless of which note you start on but for now in this level I would just think of this and see if you can construct these RP in one octave chunks and two

octave chunks regardless of where you start so if I was to start say here on this low E string I'd be looking for [Music] this if I was to start on the a string [Music] there if I start on the D string I can probably get one octave if I start on the G string I can get one octave or even like this I start on the B string this is where we have to shift position so we get [Applause] like and then if I start on a single [Music] string it's a little bit harder

you could actually think of that in two chunks you could think of the one and the three and you could think of the five and the one like this now for level five I think it's a good idea that you practice these AR pedos on single string so you really are thinking about how they are constructed so you could take like for example that c major Triad or arpeggio just on that low E string you take C minor one just on the a string you want to see where these intervals are this way as well

as this way so by that I mean horizontally as well as vertically in one position it's just going to be so much more beneficial for your visualization later on now this is one thing I should point out that these levels I'm kind of rushing through and essentially these will take years in some cases to actually going in terms of visualization like don't just think that it's an easy quick fix I know a lot of YouTube especially guitar lessons they talk about the one trick you can do honestly the one thing that people don't mention is

that it takes years and years of practice I mean I've been doing it this in alic way for 15 years now so you think there are still even sometimes in my visualization in fact a lot of times where I get things mixed up or I have to recap and really focus don't take these quick fixes as like the golden word shall we say but anyway let's move on to level six then okay so for level six then what we want to do is go back to our C major scale that we did right at the

beginning and we want to actually harmonize this with these Triad arpeggios so basically all that means is that on every degree of the scale there belongs an arpeggio or a chord basically we are going to take take this principle and harmonize this whole scale so from C we know that there is a major Triad there if we go to the second degree of the scale what arpeggio do we get now if you're struggling in order to like create these thinking about them one way you could do it is to take the scale and basically take

that idea of take one skip one so imagine now D is one we'll skip this note take this note we'll skip this note and take this note and now we've got a D Minor triad basically there we can see that is like one flat 3 five remember you need to think of d as the root in this situation so I can take that idea that A Minor triad belongs on that second degree so I have C Major D Minor if I do the same thing for e I'm going to get a Minor triad again so

this on F I'm gonna get a major Triad or on chord four chord five I'm gonna get a major Triad chord six I'm going to get a Minor triad chord seven I'm going to get a diminished Triad and then back to chord one which is Major so you can practice it along the strings horizontally like [Music] this and that is a very good way of doing it one cool thing to make this a bit more musical is to give yourself a common chord structure so let's think of easy pop stuff 1 6 4 five and

I could basically go okay what is that in the key of C major one is C major six is going to be a minor then I have for four F major and then five G major so I could get [Music] this you could give yourself all kinds of different exercises in terms of limitations here you could keep it on a single string so you could go okay here's chord one here's chord six chord four chord five now remember to do this both ways as well you could give yourself an exercise where you go okay I'm

only going to descend so I could go ah like this little slip of the right hand there but essentially that is a good way of getting these arpeggio shapes and making sure you truly can visualize them now for level seven what we want to do is a really cool common exercise that I'm sure some of you might have seen already but it's to play that whole scale but not go through on a single string we want to keep it in one area of the fretboard so I could take my arpeggios that I know belong on

each scale degree and keep it in one area so I could do [Music] this now I would apply that every time I can see a root note so I could do it on the E [Music] string [Music] it shouldn't matter which finger I start with like I say again check out the fretboard visualization course for more on that but essentially that is going to open up all kinds of avenues for you and we just did it ascending you could of course change that up you could give yourself different chord structures you could give yourself a

descending version the options are Limitless in terms of practicing these anyway without further Ado let's move on so in level eight I want to look at horizontal based arpeggio shapes and what's really cool is that with these Triads really there are only three shapes that you need to worry about what do I mean about this so if we are to take that 135 starting from the low E string we get this now in reality I can convert this same shape to the D and G string look how it's exactly the same and then here it's

exactly the same on the B and high string too so I can get [Music] this one thing I mentioned earlier is that you should be able to create all of these arpeggios regardless of which note you start on whether you start on the third or the fifth this is a great way to practice it so there's another shape if I start from that third basically I know that I will always get this shape if I view them horizontally [Music] and it will always [Music] work if I go from the fifth I get another shape but

again it's always going to work in this case we get this so now you could do the same thing with minor let's go to chord six cuz we know that's minor in the key of C I could take the one flat 35 and i' get this shape and then same thing same [Applause] thing if I go from the flat three I would get this if I go from the five I would get [Music] this and there essentially you are covering both of those sounds in three octaves essentially which is super cool and very useful for

breaking out of these kind of box areas I would say so let's move on then to level 9 so in level 9 we want to build further than these kind of triadic based arpeggios and this is where we're going to introduce seventh arpeggios so if you're wondering how you construct these this is super simple remember how I said that basically arpeggios are constructed in stacked thirds if we go another third away from that last note of the arpedio the fifth then we get the [Music] seventh so essentially you can take this take one skip one

take one skip one take one skip one one step further so you've got take one skip one take one skip one take one Skip One and take one and then essentially we've got C major 7 so the arpeggio would look like this and like we did with all of the major and minor and diminished and augmented Triads I would say you need to look at how these shapes look on the fretboard compared to that route and do all of the previous exercises so you know there's all of these options we could go that's quite hard

there you could do a different version of that shape and then single string so that is kind of the key now there are basically a number of these especially if we get into weirder chord types but for now I would say you should work on major 7 - 7 and Min - 7 flap 5 and dominant 7 so these would basically be tying into this level 10 so so for level 10 I would suggest that you start looking how you can Implement those four arpeggios I spoke about so you could think of major [Music] 7

you think of dominant 7 you could think of Minor 7 and you could think of Minor 7 flat 5 that actually works as a good kind of cycl and exercise by psych just mean that it repeats you know you could [Music] go and you could do that on every string set you know really focus in on which intervals are changing depending on the chord type there it's kind of a bonus I would say what we need to do really with these seventh rpos is look at them within that harmonized scale so we go back to

our C major scale and remember all the Triads that we built on each degree from the first degree we'd get major 7 from the second degree we remember We Had A Minor triad but what we can get is a minor 7 RPO and we get this from the third degree you would get a minor 7 rpgo again from the fourth degree you would get a major 7 rpgo from the fifth degree you would get a dominant 7 RPO from the sixth degree you get a minor 7 rpgo and then from the seventh degree instead of

it being a diminished Triad now we get Minor 7 flap 5 or half diminish and then we are back to one which is major 7 now remember I spoke about with the Triads you can give yourself different kinds of exercises with these so you could give yourself a chord structure like that one six four five that we did various different limitation exercises but let's say we do C major a minor 7 F major 7 and G dominant 7 we get [Music] this [Music] there I'm just running up and down them from those root notes and

whilst that doesn't sound super musical at the moment if you can't do that it's going to be very difficult to actually make musical sound and ideas with arpeggios you know you run the risk of turning into the kind of typical metal sweet picking ideas all of these kind of things [Music] where it's just the same shapes over and over again in a sequence not that there's anything wrong with that but if you just want to use these rpos in a more musical sense then I would say that you need to start looking at building them

from different areas now if you are interested in how you can do that there's two options you can check out the extra two levels over at music bro um I'll leave that link down in the description or if you are interested in how you can construct Musical lines with a more focused kind of curriculum then check out my brand new improvisation road map part two where I dive into both these seventh redos and how they work but also things like Triad pairs which are a super useful technique for really outlining chords in a very musical

way really it just elevates your phrasing I think at least so remember all of them are 40% off at my website if you use the code bf40 what is it that you guys would like to see in future versions of these 10 levels I would love to know and I hope these give you some ideas of what you should be practicing my name is Jack Gardner thanks again for tuning in till next time [Music] [Music] cheers [Music] oh