Tip: Three Note Apreggio

Darrin Koltow Blog Scales and Modes for Guitar

This tip concerns a Bb 7 arpeggio without the Bb. I wanted to show you an alternative to the standard 4-note arpeggio with the root, which can get kind of boring to play and listen to after a while. What you get when you take away the root of a dom 7 chord is a diminished chord – or arpeggio in this case.

You can play this with just fingers 2 and 3. The following notes are all eighth notes.

|---------------------10-10--13-13-|-10-10--------------------------|
|-----------------6-9--------------|-------9-6----------------------|
|-------------7-7------------------|------------7-7-----------------|
|---------3-6----------------------|----------------6-3-------------|
|-----5-5--------------------------|--------------------5-5---------|
|-1-4------------------------------|-------------------------4-1----|

This isn’t the end of the exercise. Practice this above tab and in the next post we’ll build on the exercise by subtracting from it.

Thanks for reading.

This first appeared in the Guitar Noise News – December 16, 2008 newsletter. Reprinted with permission.