The Guitar Player's Resource
Happy international guitar month! In this lesson I would like to give you some technical exercises that will help to get your playing in shape. These exercises will help you improve your picking, dexterity, and overall technique. A few of these examples may be familiar to you and some of these may be new to you. The important thing is to make these as musical as possible and practice evenly with a metronome with both hands in sync. All of these examples are in the A minor scale, but be sure to play them in all keys and in different scales all over the neck.
Example 1 is another neat pattern that moves up the neck within the A minor scale. It is mainly just a 6 note pattern that is repeating up in diatonic 5th intervals. This pattern could also be playing off of different intervals; try moving it up a 4th.
MP3 - Technical Exercises, Example 1
Example 2 is a 16th note triplet pattern that blazes up the fingerboard in the A lydian scale (A, B, C#, D#, E, F#, G#) which features the same tones as an E major scale. The first bar is a 12 note pattern that moves through the scale and then when you get to the E string it turns into a 3 note sequence that moves up the neck. At the end of the 2nd bar you just descend down the A lydian scale until you resolve to the E note.
MP3 - Technical Exercises, Example 2
Example 3 is a great arpeggio exercise. These are all the diatonic 7th arpeggios right out of the F Lydian scale (F, G, A, B, C, D, E). Play the first arpeggio up and then the second one down and continue this through all of the arpeggios. Continue this on all strings and make sure you alternate pick each arpeggio.
MP3 - Technical Exercises, Example 3
Example 4 uses all the triads in A minor and it has some wider interval skips. All of these triads are just the diatonic chords built right from
the scale and the voicings for each triad are (1, 5, 10). A 10th interval is just a third up an octave.
MP3 - Technical Exercises, Example 4
OK, that is it for now! Be sure to make up your own patterns and don't forget to check out my latest CD, "Chameleon". Don't forget to visit mikecampese.com.
Mike Campese is an all-around music performer, session artist and teacher competent in many musical styles, electric and acoustic. He has studied at G.I.T. (Honors Graduate), and with Paul Gilbert, Norman Brown, Stanley Jordan, Scott Henderson and Keith Wyatt.
