Premier Guitar – Triad Arpeggios Applied

Hello Everyone! Happy New Year! In the last lesson, I showed you some ways to play triad arpeggios up the neck while staying inside the major scale. Also, we covered some three-octave arpeggios and triads moving in a up-down type fashion. This lesson will focus more on how you use these triads over a progression. The important thing is to know where to use these arpeggios as they can really help make your playing more melodic. You don’t have to play the full arpeggio, but it does sound cool at blazing speeds. The goal here is to be able to hear the chords just by playing the arpeggios. Over time, memorize the notes in all the triads in all twelve keys all over the fingerboard.

Here, I put together a progression in the key of F# minor. The first few measures are similar to the three-octave arpeggios we have learned in the previous lesson. Over the next three measures, we move to two-string arpeggios. Notice how the progression moves down the neck beginning with A, then to the F#m and then G# dim. In the last measure, the D# and the F diminished are not in the scale, they are just passing chords. Also, remember to use alternate picking throughout this whole example. Download example audio…

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This is another example using chords from the key of F# minor. I also threw in some octave displacement techniques to keep things interesting. There are some triads used in this line, like the E major triad at the end of the first measure. The last measure implies F#m with some wide interval stretches. Download example audio…

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This is a chordal string skipping type arpeggio pattern put together with three triads: F#m, E and C#m. I played the arpeggios using more octave displacement. Download example audio…

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Ok that is it! Be sure to make up your own triad arpeggio ideas, and don’t forget to visit mikecampese.com.