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What's the best picking pattern for soul-style triplet arpeggios?


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Posted

Example:

jqVrNK4uiB4

 

I've always been terrible at this, but I've got to buckle down and learn it for a few songs the band's adding, so I might as well learn it right. My natural form is to do: down up down (going up the chord) and up up up (coming back down the chord). Is there a standard way to do this? Everything I find when googling is all sweeping stuff.

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Posted

In the end do it however you can to deliver the soul, but...

 

Remember back in those days alternate picking wasn't the big thing it is today. These are all downstrokes while ascending and upstrokes while descending. You can hear him change direction at each first note of the group by the attack of the pick. Where you hear it most prominent is on the first note of the second group (an upstroke), it's stronger than the last note of the first group, and the first note of the first group is smoother than the last note of the second group. Listen again, you'll hear it. The attack of the upstroke starting the second group puts the weight on the back beat (more on that below).

 

Also, it sound lightly staccato too, much like the opening piano part. This is another interesting technique where muting is just as important as how you attack the notes. For this I keep the chord form and briefly lift my fretting hand off the frets to deaden them or choke them. I do this for each note played.

 

So, at that speed it would be done like so to keep the notes in each group sounding even but allow for the feel of the downbeat and the backbeat individually when you change to the next group. Like so:

 

 

E--------3------------

B------3---3-----------

G----4-------4---------

D--5-----------repeat--

A--------------------

E---------------------

d d d u u u

 

 

Side note:

 

This isn't necessarily triplets. The charts I run into in this style are written in 6/4 or 6/8 (we do at least one of these types of tunes per show run). Sure it could be in 3/4 since you're always at the mercy of the transcriber, but I've run into this as some sort of 6 count across a few transcribers. It sits nicely in 6 which is evident in the attack of that upstroke...it's placed right where the snare drum attack would be, or the back beat of the phrase.

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Posted

Just to clarify--this isn't the song I'm learning; we've got a couple new songs coming up that could benefit from this kind of backup. TBH, I wanted to get this post up before I left for work, in order to get some responses to read when I got home, and I couldn't go through a bunch of songs to find the perfect example because my wife was asleep in the next room. This was the first song that came to mind, "sight unheard", that I knew had the arpeggio thing I needed right at the start.

 

I'm just posting because I'm compelled by a deadline to learn a technique I've always wanted to learn, and I didn't want to spend a lot of time learning the wrong way if there's an obvious economy of motion issue that I'm not seeing.

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Posted

Is there some other arpeggio in this song in particular? The part I believe both of us are explaining it the guitar line that plays right on the beat. Is that the correct part? If so, you should have the ammo you need now, if not let us know what time the arpeggio is in the clip.

 

FYI, I don't have an open lesson slot Monday at 7pm if you want to come in. Bring in exactly what pin points your question and I can help you through it for sure.

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Posted

No, that's the bit. I've been alternate picking on my way up, and doing all downstrokes on the way down. I don't know if you were around for this, but Mark Wein put up a youtube lesson on pick technique, and I learned that I've been holding my pick wrong for 15 years, so now I'm really intent on getting my technique right whenever I start learning something new. It sounds like there isn't an established wisdom on this particular bit, so I'll sally forth.

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Posted

Different styles promote different ways to hold the pick. For instance I would never hold the pick in this song like I do for a country riff. And I'd never hold the pick either of these ways for a speed metal tune. Etc...

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