II-V arpreggio fingerings

Here are two fingerings for playing 7th chord arpreggios. The first example contains practical two octave root postion fingerings. The second example is kind of a short exercise using all the available arpreggio notes within the first five frets of the guitar neck. I’ve crammed the notes using a combination of 8th notes and triplets.

The next step after trying these examples out is to write some lines using these fingerings. There are obviously a lot of other fingering possibilities but these are two that you can try out. Enjoy! =)

Till later,play on!

Soloing Using Chord Tones

Here is a solo I wrote using mostly chord tones over the first 16 bars of a well known standard tune.

Enjoy!

An F7 Line

This is a jazzy line that I wrote over an F7 chord. It contains some bebop type ideas as well as some position changes.

Will blog a longer post with more examples in a future post.

Till later, play on!

The Smart Box

This is a miniature that I wrote last week as a single note arpreggio study. It’s kind of neo-classical but sounds really happy with it being in C Major and all. The title is a reference to it reminding me of music I used to hear when I watched Malaysia’s local educational TV channel (TV Pendidikan) when I was a kid.

07 Etude #1

This is a little piece that I just wrote as an etude for the right hand. The right hand pattern is: P i m a m i thoughout the piece. I’m looking forward to write more short pieces like this and will post it on the blog when I get them done.

Till later, play on!

Melodic Minor Part 4: The augmented triad

Looking at the diatonic triads built on C Melodic Minor, we will find one augmented triad in the scale:

I min = Cmin
IImin = Dmin
bIIIaug = Ebaug
IV maj = F
V maj = G
VI dim = Adim
VII dim = Bdim

which is Eb+

The chord tones of the Eb augmented triad are:

Eb, G and B

Also, all the inversions of this triad will also be root position augmented triads from the lowest note, hence:

Eb aug = G aug = B aug

Symetrical relationships such as this are very useful for guitar players as they provide a great visual resourse for us in understanding and improvising over the scale. After all, 3 notes out of the 7 notes from the scale is a lot!

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Ways to practice

1. Figure out two-octave fingerings for the aug triad, practice with metronome to develop fluency.
2. Figure out whole range of guitar fingering (3 octave plus) for all augmented triads. (Since all augmented triads have three possible roots, there are really only four augmented triads!)
3. Play different chords from the melodic minor scale and figure out the note relationship of the augmented triad to the chord you chose.

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Till later, play on!

Cool Links #2

To add to the previous post about right hand technique here are two related links:

A PDF file about right hand guitar technique from the Fender Players website (I know it’s an unlikely combination but the PDF excerpt is from a book by Christopher Parkening – a prolific classical guitarist)

Christopher Parkening Right Hand Lesson PDF

Another great link is this – (copyright free!) from the Danish Royal Library:

Mauro Giuliani’s 120 exercises for the right hand PDF

Enjoy!

Major Triad fingerings