(guitar music)
- Yes.
What is up guys?
It is your friend, Justus West here
the leader of the Justus League,
and I am back.
I wanna thank everybody in the comments
and on the viewers of the last videos
you guys were awesome.
Thank you guys for the support
and thank you to Fender,
for giving people like me
this awesome platform to share techniques
that we love so much.
So you might be asking what is today's technique?
And you might've caught it
there in the beginning of the video,
but I am going to talk about arpeggios.
Not to be confused with Cheerios.
It's not related.
I was trying to make a joke there, but it didn't stick.
That being said,
arpeggios are the most awesome guitar thing
or really the most awesome thing ever.
A good way to tell if something is an arpeggio,
is that you're gonna have a starting note and an ending note
and some notes in between.
And what makes it an arpeggio,
is the repetition of these notes over and over again.
Arpeggiation is commonly heard
in things like the "Stranger Things" theme song.
Anything that was like synth related,
especially through the '80s and '90s was mostly arpeggiated.
And obviously it's a heck of a lot easier
for a synth to do it that's computerized
than for a human to do it on a guitar neck.
But let me tell you,
there are amazing ways you can get into this
and implement it easily into your playing
to create awesome lines,
and even awesome guitar parts.
The first way I think is a good way
to implement arpeggiation into your playing
is by putting it into your practice warm-up schedule.
And this is a cool thing for beginners
or intermediate players
who are just looking to expand their types of lines.
So again, the easiest way is to take any set of notes,
which in this case,
we'll do a D major seven arpeggiation.
Like a super basic one.
And you just wanna take any set of however many notes
but the key is to play them
in the exact same order in forward and reverse.
So if we're gonna choose a D major seven arpeggiation
that would be C-sharp,
D,
F-sharp,
A,
C-sharp,
and D.
Now the fingerings for that is gonna be
first finger on C-sharp, on the A string,
and then your middle finger on D, on the A string.
So that would be the fourth and the fifth fret.
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Now for that F-sharp, A,
we're gonna put our first finger on F-sharp,
and then use our pinky to catch A.
Now that's just my preference.
You can use your ring finger
but it's much easier to use your pinky.
So first we have, or...
Right now we have.
(guitar music)
F-sharp, A.
And then we use our ring finger and our pinky to play,
C-sharp and D, on the G string.
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Now, again you see, I came back in reverse order.
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And that is the foundational key to arpeggiating.
You're just taking any set of notes.
It can really be anything that's even slightly melodic
and playing it in the same forward and reverse order,
to make a cool set of notes.
So again,
we're talking about implementing it into our practice.
And so, the easiest way is with major seven arpeggio.
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Now, if you listened to that,
there are few things that you're working out.
You're working out your left hand
and getting used to picking different notes
and getting used to the fret distances
and string switching.
On your right hand,
you're getting used to picking evenly
and getting good tone out of each note
and getting used to the up and down motion,
while switching string.
Let's play that slowly together,
just to get a feel for these notes.
Again, you have the C-sharp, D, F-sharp, A,
C-sharp, D.
All right.
One,
two,
three,
four.
(guitar music)
And there you have it.
A quick and easy way to start implementing it
into your practice,
I recommend warming up with that,
to get your fingers ready to play
and ready to stretch.
So after getting that first arpeggiation down,
the best way to really get into more arpeggiating fun,
is to simply add more notes.
So, from the first one we have.
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Let's go higher in this major seven chord
that we're breaking apart.
So, we'll play.
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So, there I just added another set of F-sharp and A.
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So, it's cool because arpeggiation
if you can pick two notes a string,
you're basically just arpeggiating the same octave notes,
over and over again.
This can help you to build really long arpeggiations
across the neck,
because you're just simply finding the same notes
and new octave ranges and playing it again.
So, with that F-sharp and A on the B string,
I'm using my first finger and pinky finger,
and the frets for that is seven, eight, nine, ten.
So a seventh and tenth fret.
(guitar music)
Super cool arpeggiation.
Again it's great for practice warmups.
Another way is just getting familiar with the neck,
'cause you can take any notes
and make arpeggiations out of them, which is awesome.
Now I wanna go one more stage higher
and add one more set of notes,
into this arpeggiation.
I'm sure you can guess what notes it is.
It is C-sharp and D,
and we're gonna add it on the high E string,
which will be like and more extended arpeggiation
for those who really wanna push into the limit.
So after you play that F-sharp and A on the B string,
Use your third finger and your pinky finger
to play C-sharp, D on the high E-string.
(guitar music)
Let's play that together slowly.
One,
two,
three,
four.
(guitar music)
Sounds super, super dope.
You can make so many awesome guitar parts out of this.
The next part of what I wanna talk about
with arpeggiating, is creating harmonic lines.
For those of you
who are more in like your intermediate stage
of guitar playing,
and wanna record some awesome parts,
one cool thing that you guys should try out
is picking an arpeggiation,
just like that major seven arpeggiation
I just showed you guys,
and stacking it in different guitar tracks.
So you'll start off by doing the first arpeggiation,
then you'll stagger your start.
So instead of starting on beat one,
like with your first layer,
you'll start on beat two.
And then you'll do that a couple of times,
and it creates an awesome kind of swelling in and out
where harmony and different things meet at different points
as the parts connect together.
Also, even if you don't wanna play
the same arpeggiation multiple times,
you can find different arpeggiations
that coincide with each other
to create harmonic guitar parts.
This is famously used by one of my favorite guitar players,
John Mayer.
If you listen to some of his guitar parts
across different albums,
most of them are like arpeggiations
that are actually kind of matching up together.
Which I think is super, super dope.
It's something you'll have to listen down in the mix for,
but it's a cool way to add color to your songs
and just add a dope vibe.
The last cool thing I wanna cover
that's awesome about arpeggiation,
is it can be a cool intro,
into playing in different time signatures
that you're not necessarily familiar with.
So, the cool thing is that if you play quarter notes,
you can play in whatever time signature you want.
If you want to play in seven,
you just simply pick seven notes.
If you wanna play in five,
you simply pick five notes and double pick one of the notes.
One, two, three, four, five.
One, two, three, four, five, one.
Super easy way to go ahead
and start venturing into other time signatures.
And of course there are so many endless possibilities
on how you can combine time signatures,
combine what notes you play on what beats.
At that point the sky is the limit.
Well, I hope this has been a helpful lesson on arpeggios.
Again, it's one of my favorite techniques ever,
and venture into it.
Don't be afraid to try weird notes
and weird combination of notes.
The key thing is that arpeggiations are just chords
broken down into single notes.
So if you play a chord,
you can then turn that chord easily into an arpeggiation
by simply taking the notes in the chord
and making a pattern out of them.
Again, thanks to my friends at Fender,
and thank you to you guys, the viewers, for tuning in,
and yeah, Justus West out.