Guitar Fundamentals: Arpeggios Around the Circle of Fifths

1. Introduction: When I was getting started on guitar, I learned an exercise using arpeggios that was instrumental for me in gaining confidence in my playing. I'm Lancelot Houston and I'm a musician and producer. I've played in several bands and have a passion for teaching music. Although I was able to play the exercise, I didn't quite understand what I was playing. Once I was able to combine the theory with the technique, it changed the way that I approached the. Now I want to share this method with you and Arpeggio is a chord where the notes are played in succession rather than simultaneously. By learning different shapes, patterns, and positions, you're going to gain the ability to navigate the guitar with these throughout the process will cover the circle of fits. The tool that we will use as our, the Circle of Fifths provides a road map to navigate effortlessly through different keys and progressions, exercises for building dexterity and technical proficiency. We'll explore various rhythmic patterns and techniques that will challenge and refine your finger coordination. This class is designed to meet you at your skill level and take you further. Perhaps you're seeking different ways of navigating the guitar, or maybe you're looking for the perfect form of exercise. By the end, you've gained a new confidence in both the playing and theory behind the guitar. Grab your guitar and let's get started. 2. Class Orientation: Today we're going to learn how to play arpeggios around the guitar neck. By the end of this class, you've learned a technique that will help with all aspects of your playing. In my project, I'll be demonstrating how to use two arpeggio patterns in order to navigate through every key of the circle of fifths. All you'll need is a guitar to get started. Here's what I'll be looking for in your class project. Playing through the two arpeggio patterns seamlessly, using a metronome to keep time and subdividing your arpeggios with different rhythms. You can submit your project by recording yourself on your phone or another recording device. Next we'll take a look at the basics of arpeggios, the circle of fifths, and the theory behind them. 3. The Circle of Fifths: Before we get deep into arpeggios, let's build a foundation of understanding by covering some basics of music theory. How to build chords, and how to navigate through the circle of fits. What are Arpeggios? Arpeggio is a chord where the notes are played in succession rather than played simultaneously. In order to best understand these concepts, I think it'll be helpful to move over to the keyboard. First, some basics. There are 12 different notes. This is known as a chromatic scale. Here we're looking at all the notes from C to C, going from the low to high, this is called an octave. The notes in between consist of both black and white keys. The white keys of the piano are A, B, C, D, E, F, N, G. The black keys are the notes between the natural notes, and they're called accidentals, or you may know them as sharps or flats. When a note is sharp, the pitch moves up or to the right by one key. The black key, to the right of C becomes sharp. When a note is flat, the pitch moves down or to the left by one key. C sharp could also be looked at as flat. It's also important to note that there are no sharps or flats between the notes E and F, and B, and C. Now I want to look at the scale. The scale is important because it is generally the starting place. When discussing the basics of theory, scales are notes that are grouped together within an octave. This is important in understanding how cords. In this lesson, we're going to look at the most basic form of chord known as a triad. Triads take the first, third, and fifth notes of the scale when played together. We have a chord, in the case of the C chord, the 13 and the five are the notes E and G. When played in this order, this chord is known as a root position chord. Root position chord is when the one of the chord is the lowest note being played. If we want to peg the chord, we would play each note one at a time, rather than playing all three notes simultaneously. Now I want to discuss the circle of fifths once again. We'll start by looking at C. Here, C is representing the key of C, or in other words, the group of nodes that build the C scale. The key of C is our starting point because it does not have any sharps or flats. Now let's fill in the rest of the circle by traveling an interval of a fifth. We're going to go clockwise and fill in the next part of the circle going from C and moving up a fifth. We will end up on, every time that we move a fifth, we're going to add an accidental to that key. In the case of the key of G, we will have added one sharp. If we fill the circle all the way around, the pattern continues. The key of D has two sharps, in the key of A has three sharps, et cetera. Now I want to take a look at what happens when we travel counterclockwise through the circle of fifths. When we travel in reverse, the circle of fifths moves in intervals of fourth. We'll start at C and move counterclockwise by a fourth. Moving from C to F, going in this direction, we add a flat to the key. The key of F has one flat. The key of B flat has two flats, flat has three flats, et cetera, at the bottom of the circle. The flat keys meet the sharp keys at sharp or flat, depending on how you want to look at it. In the exercise that you'll be learning in this class, we're going to use this idea of the circle of fits. You're going to learn how a guitarist is going to use our peggio to play through these keys. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you two our peggio patterns and you'll be one step closer in learning how to play them around the guitar neck. 4. Arpeggio Patterns: In order to play our peggio seamlessly around the guitar neck, you'll need to learn two patterns. In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to play through both of these patterns. First, we'll need to go over some basic navigation of the guitar neck. It's important to know the note names of the guitar strings. We'll start with the first string, or the string playing the highest note, which is indicated by the small E. The second string is the third string is the fourth is D, fifth is A, and the sixth string, or the lowest string is another E. You'll most likely have fret board indicators on your guitar as well. In this diagram, you'll see single diamonds on the frets, 357.9 and a double diamond on the 12th fret. The 12th fret is important because it indicates an octave above the open strings. The notes played open are the same notes at the 12th fret. Next let's go over how I'll be referring to the fingers you'll need to use to play through the patterns. Your pointer or index finger is one, the middle finger is two, the ring finger is three, and your pinky finger is four. Now it's time to learn the first Arpeggio pattern, which I'm going to refer to as pattern one. These patterns are meant to be played anywhere on the guitar neck. But to start, I'd like you to learn pattern on E by starting with your second finger placed on the eighth fret of the low string. Next with your one finger, play the seventh threat of the string. Now stretch your third finger to play the tenth threat still on the string. This may at first feel a bit unnatural, but by using the third finger here, you're setting yourself up to play the rest of the pattern much more efficiently. Next, we're staying on the tenth threat, but moving to the string, and playing this with our fourth finger. After we'll move to the ninth fret of the G string and play it with your second finger. Follow this by using your first finger and forming a small bar on the eighth threat of both the B and High strings, and play through both of these notes. Finally, let's take your fourth finger and stretch all the way to the 12th fret. Once you're able to play this pattern, get comfortable with playing it backwards as well. You'll want to start and finish the pattern on the eighth fret of the low string. Now let's learn pattern two. When learning pattern two, I want you to start with your first finger on the fifth fret of the low E string. Next, use your third finger to play the eighth fret of the low string, after your fourth finger to play the eighth threat of the string. Follow this by using your second finger to play the seventh threat of the D string. Now place your first finger on the fifth fret of the G string. After that, use your second finger to play the sixth threat of the string. Now place your first finger on the fifth fret of the high string. Finish the pattern by using your finger to play the eighth threat of the high string. Play through the pattern both forward and backwards. So the pattern begins and ends on the fifth fret of the low. Next we're going to take this technique, and I'm going to show you how to use these two patterns to play through every key around the circle of frets. 5. Arpeggios Around the Circle of Fourths: By now you should know the two Arpeggio patterns. I'm going to break down how to use these patterns to navigate the guitar and the theory behind the process. In the previous lesson, you learned pattern one by starting on the eighth fret of the low E string. I wanted to start there because this is the C major Arpeggio. You'll be starting and ending this exercise on C and playing all the major keys between them. Once you've played through pattern on E forward and back, you'll be on the low string on the eighth fret. Now you'll need to place your first finger three frets lower than the fret you ended pattern one on. In this case, we'll place our one finger on the fifth fret to start pattern two. By playing pattern two in this position, we've jumped a fourth from C to one thing to know is that if you look at the starting note of the pattern, you'll notice that it's not an but it's actually a. With pattern two, you're starting on the third of the, rather than the one. Now that you've played through pattern two, both forward and back, you should have your one finger on the fifth threat. Now you want to move back to pattern one. And all you need to do to get there is place your second finger down one threat above your current location. You started on the fifth threat when you ended pattern two. Now we're moving to the sixth threat to start pattern one over again. This should be a pretty natural and fluid transition because your hand will already be positioned in the correct part of the neck starting pattern one on the sixth threat of your low E string, you'll be playing through the B flat. Go now where you repeat the cycle by moving three frets lower and starting pattern two on the third fret of the low E string. When you play pattern two in this position, you'll be playing an E flat arpeggio. Once you've played through this pattern, place your second finger down and switch back to pattern one. Now you are on the fourth fret of the low, and you're playing an A flat arpeggio. Once again, you'll be moving three frets down and play through pattern two. Starting on the first fret, this is the flat arpeggio. When you are finished, place you second finger down and play through pattern one, again, starting on the second fret of the low E. Now we've moved into sharp keys and you're playing the sharper peggio. At this point we can't continue the same cycle because we've run out of fret board. This is the only time when moving throughout the keys where the cycle breaks. Here we are moving from F sharp and we need to get to B. In order to play B, you'll need to repeat pattern one by placing your second finger on the seventh fret. Once you've played through pattern one ending on the seventh threat, you can just repeat the cycle until we reach again to go through it. Next you'll be playing pattern two, starting on the fourth fret to play an Arpeggio. Follow that by playing pattern one on the fifth fret to play through an A. Arpeggio. Switch back to pattern two, by starting on the second fret to play through the Arpeggio. Switch again to pattern on, starting on the third fret to play through the Arpeggio. Finally we circle back to, but now we're going to be playing in a different position. We're going to play by using pattern two. You can play this by either starting on the low E string, played open, or you can go up the octave and play on the 12th fret. Congrats on getting through the entire circle and navigating through all of the keys. Keep practicing this until you're able to play through the entire exercise scenes. Next, I'm going to show you how to take this exercise to the next level by incorporating different rhythms and alternate Pa. 6. Alternate Picking and Rhythm: Now that you have a good handle on how to play our patios around the guitar neck, I want to show you how to incorporate different rhythms and alternate picking in order to get the most out of this exercise. Once you've gotten comfortable with the two patterns, start trying to subdivide your picking to incorporate eighth notes, triplets, and 16th notes. Using a metronome will help you keep time and increase the accuracy of the subdivision of your notes. When playing through the exercise, you most likely played each not once and then moved on to the next. Let's refer to this as using corner notes. When you got that down, play through it again. But now subdivide using eighth notes. So in other words, now we're going to keep the same tempo, but play each note twice. Next, move on to subdividing by three, also known as triplets. Finally, try keeping the same tempo, but subdivide the B into four, known as 16th notes. I want you to try this exercise using alternate picking. Alternate picking is simply just the practice of switching between upstrokes and downstrokes. Now let's put it all together and I will demonstrate this technique in my class project. 7. Class Project: Now we've reached the point where I will play the Arpeggio patterns through the entire circle of fifths, starting and ending at sea. Remember to use alternate picking, practice with the metronome and play through different subdivisions. H he. 8. Conclusion: Congrats on making it at the end of this. I hope this exercise has helped you build some confidence in navigating the guitar neck, increase your finger dexterity, and gain some knowledge in music theory. Remember to post your final projects in the project gallery and post any questions you have in the discussion section. Remember, practice makes perfect. And I hope to see you in some of my classes in the future. I'll see you next time.