Smooth Arpeggio Lines

Hi everybody!

In this lesson we'll take a look at smooth arpeggio lines. I personally don't like sweep arpeggios so much because I prefer a more horizontal way of the fretboard. So most of the time I connect two or three arpeggio positions by making position shift or slides. I chose the most important SIX arpeggio patterns/forms like Major 7th, Dominant 7th, Minor 7th, Minor 7th/b5, Augmented (or Major with #5) and the jazzy Altered 7th chord that comes from the 7th position of the Melodic Minor Scale. This chord is mostly used as a Dominant 7th that resolves to the root chord (for example D7Alt to Gm7).

The big advantage of these arpeggio forms is that they are really easy to memorize, only two octaves, don't have complicated fingerings, you learn to visualize your freeboard AND you can easily connect them with your personal licks.
So first I play an arpeggio for a few bars and then I demonstrate how I connect the same arpeggio with some cool licks.

Here are the chords for the lesson:

Dmaj7 :||8x| Break |
D7 :||8x| Break |
Dm7 :||8x| Break |
Dm7b5 :||8x| Break |
Daug :||8x| Break |
D7alt :||8x|

Keep in mind, that a arpeggio is only a broken chord and to make it to real music you should add some melody to it! Otherwise it's just an exercise.

On some arpeggios I used some jazzier scales like Mixolydian #4, Half tone, whole tone scale, some chromatics, the altered scale and some bluesy stuff.

Final words
Try to find your own way of connecting theses Arpeggios with your licks. Maybe by just playing the same arpeggio notes on a lower string (but in the same key!) or by just changing one note of the arpeggio. There are endless possibilities here.

I made a lot of backing tracks here, this way you can experiment with new ideas.

I tried to transcribe as close as possible. Specially in the Guitar Pro 5 you'll find all these little extras!

Have fun with it!
Cheers - Guido

Technical specifications
Guitar: Music Man Luke II
Strings: D'Addario NYXL 09/42
Amp: Peavey JSX Top with Marshall 2x12" V30
Effects: T.c. electronic G-Major
Sound-deflection system by DEEFLEXX

Mics: Shure SM57
Audio Interface: Focusrite Saffire PRO 24
Recording SW: Logic 9, several plugins

Standard tuning: E, A, D, G, B, E

Tempo: 110 BPM