Acoustic Rock Explorations: How to Improve Your Arpeggio Technique

If you're experiencing difficulty keeping a steady flow when playing arpeggios—chords played melodically, rather than harmonically—this lesson is for you. Arpeggios can be valuable technical exercises, as well as great tools for accompaniment. Learn a handful of increasingly complex fingerstyle picking patterns and then begin incorporating arpeggios into your vocabulary. Both your rhythm and lead playing will benefit in the process, as will your compositional ability and overall musicianship. You can employ this technique on Led Zeppelin’s “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” Steve Morse’s “Tumeni Notes,” and Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them,” among others.