Triadic arpeggios

Aim of the exercise: Learn to break up major and minor chords into arpeggios.
Exercise type: Arpeggios
Starting tempo: 60 beats per minute
Duration: 10 minutes

Just notes of a chord played one by one

Arpeggios are nothing more than notes of a chord played one after the other. Lots of guitarists use arpeggios to break out from scale doodling so that their solos do not sound like a series of scale exercise licks.

The arpeggios you will learn in this exercise are called triadic arpeggios because the chords you are breaking are triads. They consist of the root, the minor or major third (this determines whether it's a major or a minor chord), and the fifth.

You will notice that most of these arpeggios are just fragments of scale positions that you may already know (if not, you will very soon).

Two longforms of the minor arpeggio with sweeping

You will learn and practice two forms of the minor arpeggio and practice each one for five minutes.

When playing you will be playing the notes in succession from lowest to highest and vice versa. You will be playing them in one sweeping motion - meaning that when you change from a lower string to a higher one you will play always play a downstroke and when going from higher strings to lower strings you will always play an upstroke.

With this your picking hand will be moving in a smooth continuous sweeping motion. Let the downstroke and upstroke symbols on the tabs guide you.

D - Minor Arpeggio Longform

This is the longform D minor arpeggio. It's spread out all over the fretboard so you can use it in your playing to connect scale positions that are not adjacent. Start slow as the huge leaps could be a strain on your fretting hand.

F
A
D
F
A
D
F
A
D
F

Here are the tabs:

d minor longform sweep

G - Minor Arpeggio Longform

Make sure you remember where the roots lie in all the diagrams so that you can transpose these arpeggios to any key by shifting them up and down the neck.

G
Bb
D
G
Bb
D
G
Bb
D
G

The tabs:

g minor longform sweep

« Select a different variation!

Start practicing! How much time do you have? In minutes.

GO!