Using arpeggios tastefully and musically

oldschoolshred · July 21, 2011

When something is contrived and then learned by rote ,odds are that such repetition will

reduce "emotional content". As Bruce Lee points out in "Enter the dragon" ,such an approach should get your ass kicked! Bach is an excellent example to learn from. I was listening to the "24" as a child before "neo-classical " playing became popular. Bach intentionally left space for individual interpretation and improvisation. One needs to develope a voice in real time to get emotionally involved.

I don't agree with what you're saying but I respect your opinion I suppose. But I think we're straying from the point of this thread a little bit, which is actually touching on some great points that I've been studying the last couple days when practicing.

This is about sharing arpeggios and how to use them best when improvizing. Classical music obviously is a great tool for this, aside from being great music in itself.

Thanks all.

Festus · July 21, 2011

Also to note the thing that differentiates the Bach pieces from everything else is the lack of repetition.

Ummm...I'm sorry, but that's so untrue it's absurd. There is an enormous amount of repetition in Bach's cello suites; perhaps more so than in any other music he wrote. I am not implying in any way that the repetition is bad...quite the contrary, the repetition is a huge part of the cohesiveness and logic of the pieces. But make no mistake, it IS loaded with repetition.

Festus · July 21, 2011

This is about sharing arpeggios and how to use them best when improvizing.

Come up with actual motives and melodies that incorporate, hint at, or are entirely constructed of arpeggios, rather than tearing through a bunch of arpeggio licks that the kiddies play at Guitar Center on Saturday afternoons, and you'll be onto something. Organize them into coherent musical phrases, and your problem is solved.

If you're looking for something that's purely 'emotional', then sing/scream/moan about how someone did you wrong, and people will imagine your playing is emotional, even if you're playing air guitar to a MIDI track.

Festus · July 21, 2011

BTW try to learn several of the pieces (or at least the ones that are playable on the guitar) from the Cello suites

All of them are playable on guitar...whether they translate well or not varies from piece to piece, but they are all most certainly playable (as are the Sonatas and Partitas for violin).

gennation · July 21, 2011

This is a great one and contains a couple great classic bebop lines. Instead of play arpeggio one or over the chords you're playing try some directional playing FROM chord tone TO chord tone instead of OVER the chord...(I've posted this here before, but it's definitely a musical way of playing through arpeggio's)

This is a little piece I pulled out of the song "Little Willie Leaps" many years ago. (this isn't necessarily from the song but something I came up with to show the fundamentals of creating some motion looking at the fundamentals of the song/progression)

It's a basic || Imaj7 | IIm V | IIIm VI | IIm V || progression played through twice. So it plays through the Imaj7 chord in the middle resolving to it at the end of the 8 bar phrase.

You can think of the IIm-V as the Key of F, and IIIm-VI as a IIm-V in the Key of G if you want, but it's much more musical to just learn to play FROM where you are TO where you're going, because once you take the thinking out of it you end up using notes that only have the purpose of MOVEMENT and have no "scale or Key name" without things getting really convoluted theory-wise.

The first four bars show you how to logically walk FROM chord to chord using the notes that aren't in Key to make the notes that are in Key sound less drab...

IOW, instead the common "play F Ionian/arp, play G Dorian/arp, Play C Mixolydian/arp, play etc...etc..." which tends to make it sound amateurish and lifeless playing OVER the chord on these types of progressions. These simple notes in between the chord tones give the normal chord tones life and purpose and they keep the line moving ahead.

The second four bars are some things I've picked from various places. There's some nice linear moving chromatic lines across bars 5 and 6. Bars 7 and 8 show you a 'must know' descending IIm-V bebop lick that I must have picked up from some Parker recordings at some point (maybe someone can remind me where it came from? but it's definitely Parker).

Anyway...

Those with Finale can get the file here to slow it down and stuff:

http://test.mikedodge.com/mvdmusic/Lessons/ChromResolvJazzLess1/jazzlesson1.mus

Other wise here's the MIDI:

http://test.mikedodge.com/mvdmusic/Lessons/ChromResolvJazzLess1/jazzlesson1.mid

A slower MIDI version:

http://test.mikedodge.com/mvdmusic/Lessons/ChromResolvJazzLess1/jazzlesson1-100bpm.mid

and the jpeg:

SnowViking · July 21, 2011

Ummm...I'm sorry, but that's so untrue it's absurd. There is an

enormous

amount of repetition in Bach's cello suites; perhaps more so than in any other music he wrote. I am not implying in any way that the repetition is bad...quite the contrary, the repetition is a huge part of the cohesiveness and logic of the pieces. But make no mistake, it IS loaded with repetition.

With respect - have you learned and played any of these pieces on guitar?

Festus · July 22, 2011

With respect - have you learned and played any of these pieces on guitar?

All of them, yes.

1001gear · July 22, 2011

If you subsequently apply this to shred, how do you get tastefully and musically?

gennation · July 22, 2011

Arpeggio's based on the basic harmonies of three basic chord families (useful inside and outside a Diatonic Key)...

Another thing you can do is realize there are always three applicable arpeggio's for each type of chord family (maj7, m7, 7). This takes an understanding of arpeggio's and how chords are build and brings them together. What you do is build arps off the fundamental harmony of the chord. These are the arps per family:

maj7 - Build a triad/arp from the Root, M3, and M6 interval. IOW for Gmaj7 play G, Bm7, Em triads.

m7 - Build a triad/arp from the Root, m3, and 5. IOW for Am play Am9, Cmaj7, Em7 arpeggio's.

7- Build a triad/arp from the Root, M3, and 5. IOW, for D7 play D, F#mb5, Am7 arpeggio's.

You can build into them further tot eh 9, 11, and 13 but you'll end up with redundant tones that are already covers by the three basic arps, and you'd start specifying more modal type harmonies which are necessarily needed.

These basic harmonic arpeggio's can also be stretched our linearly to create great scales to use against these types of chords:

Gmaj7 - GBD, BDF#A, EGB - G A B D E F# - notice there is no 4/11 in the scale, these three arps by default exclude the 4/11, so this one scale covers the Major scale and the Lydian scale.

Am7 - ACEB, CEGB, EGBD - A B C D E G - notice there is no 6/13 in the scale, these three arps by defualt exclude the 6/13, many players use this scale as their "Minor scale" since it covers Dorian and Aeolian in one scale. Actually, you'll find many jazzer prefer the Cmaj7 and Em7 arps over the Am arp itself, it's at the heart of that CLASSIC Wes Montgomery/George Benson sound a lot of guitarist emulate.

D7 - DF#A, F#AC, ACEG - D E F# G A C - notice there is no 6/13, the meaning behind this one is a liitle more wide open in that anytime you take notes away from the Mixolydian scale it just sounds cooler.

oldschoolshred · July 22, 2011