Quick Pickstyle Arpeggio Practice!

By: Josh Lucas

Hey everyone–just wanted to let you know that I’m working on a deep dive into arpeggios on the guitar for my next course. The course is a free supplement to my guitar lessons, so make sure to take advantage of it when it’s up!

We’ll be looking at fingerstyle arpeggios, sweeping, tapping, alternate picking–basically anything you can think of.

So here’s a quick practice lick for you intermediate players, or maybe a good warmup for advanced players. I think it’s important to make sure we have all the techniques we use down as solid as possible, so that we’re able to switch between alternate picking and legato, or alternate picking and sweeping, or sweeping and tapping–you get the picture–on the fly.

So here’s a 2 string arpeggio lick that’s simple to think through, takes you through all the arpeggios in the key of C, and switches between sweeping and alternate picking.

To get the most out of this exercise, once you get it down on the E and B strings, try it on another set of two strings.

You can even try it starting from the highest note in pitch, going to the lowest (the lick goes low-high) to work on your up-stroke sweeping.

Then, if you’re just wild and crazy, you can try it in other keys.

Any questions? josh@andrewwhiteguitars.com

Have fun!