How Can You Use Arpeggios Creatively In Your Guitar Playing?

By Luca Turilli

Arpeggios are a hugely important element of neoclassical music. Unfortunately, many guitarists have a hard time with applying them creatively in their playing. In reality there is a lot you can do to expand on the traditional ways of using arpeggios. Today I want to tell you about 3 such ideas (out of many possibilities that I teach in detail to my guitar students) that will help you to improve this part of your neoclassical guitar playing.

Use Non Traditional Groups Of Notes

When most guitar players use arpeggios, they typically play them using straight groups of 16th notes or triplets. One very cool way to expand on that is by using other groupings of notes. For example, by adding certain notes to an arpeggio it is possible to play it in groups of 5, 7, or 10 notes. This creates an unusual and creative sound and it is something that I like to do a lot in my solos with Rhapsody of Fire. You don't need to know how to play hundreds of arpeggio shapes in order to do this. You can take any arpeggio that you know how to play and simply practice adding notes to it by using hammer ons and inserting other notes of the Major or minor scale into it. You can even simply add pitches from the chromatic scale for the same cool effect. It will take a little bit of time for your mind to get used to playing these unusual groupings of notes, but over time you will become more comfortable with doing this and you will have a very expressive new tool to apply in your neoclassical guitar playing!

Here is one example of this (using a group of 7 notes):

Practice Extending Arpeggios

Another idea for playing arpeggios creatively is to combine multiple positions of one arpeggio all over the neck of the guitar. There are many possible ways of doing this. What this allows you to do is to extend a single arpeggio and to prolong its sound without boring the listener by playing the same exact note pattern many times in a row. When combining arpeggios all over the neck, you can also use several articulation techniques in the process. For example, you can either pick every note, and/or use hammer ons and pull offs (both resulting in a completely different sound).

Here is one example of this method (this one combines both picking and hammer ons and pull offs):

Use Other Techniques To Play Arpeggios (Not Limited To Sweep Picking).

When most guitar players think about practicing arpeggios, they think about using sweep picking. The truth is that arpeggios can be played using a variety of techniques such as tapping, string skipping and even pedal point. All of these techniques result in unique and different sounds. It is possible to take any arpeggio and play the same notes using 4 different techniques and the sound will be totally different each time. The better you know the notes on the guitar fretboard, the easier this becomes to do.

Here is one example of this (this example uses a pedal point to outline an arpeggio):

In my Neoclassical Revelation course, I teach my students many different creative ideas for playing arpeggios at the level of the greatest neoclassical guitar masters. You can learn to play at that level as well. Do you want me to show you how? Visit my neoclassical guitar lessons web site and begin today.