This was a real eye-opener for me as I’d never been a fan of learning those ‘etude’ style arpeggio shapes, especially if they were based on the CAGED System. Back at Music College, and after learning all my scales in … Read more
Truth be told, I always found arpeggios very challenging to learn and ended up trying to force them into my playing. At Music College we were given all these patterns to learn that you’d spend hours on end practicing, but … Read more
In Part 1, we looked at dividing the fretboard up into string pairs in order play horizontally up and down the neck. In Part 2, we take the symmetry idea a little further by creating diagonal patterns across the string … Read more
If you’re a fan of Steve Morse’s playing, one of his most prominent techniques is alternate picking arpeggios instead of sweeping them. I think this is a great technique to have under your belt as it really heightens the dexterity … Read more
I’m a big fan of ideas like this that reduce thinking and allow you to come up with some great stuff on the fly. As guitarists, we spend a lot of (probably too much) time practicing our arpeggios and scales … Read more
I was never a big fan of learning arpeggios, especially via a set of shapes up and down the neck, and a lot of rote repetition. Even after I had managed to learn the clunky shapes, I never really felt … Read more
It all started back in Music College in the early 2000s, at the ACM in Guildford (UK) to be precise, where we were handed, by none other than Guthrie Govan, an inch-thick binder containing all manner of shapes and patterns … Read more
Traditional methods of learning scales such as the CAGED System and the 3NPS System don’t really lead to melodic guitar solos. This is mainly due to the rote, drill-type way in which they’re learned—endlessly, and often mindlessly running up and … Read more