Bringing it All Together

Here is a series of exercises that incorporates all three arpeggios we’ve covered. By the time we’re done, they should definitely be under our fingers.

It has a bit of a jazz walking line feel, but incorporates arpeggios exclusively: one chord (arpeggio) and 4 quarter notes per bar.

EXERCISE 1

Video Exercise 1

 

Alright! Fun stuff. Play it through as slowly as necessary for accuracy, as well as to make sure to keep your fingering consistent (otherwise, there’s a high likelihood of getting derailed as we start incorporating variations in the following exercises!).

EXERCISE 2

You’ll notice that Exercise 1 involved playing each arpeggio in an ascending manner, exclusively. Let’s mix that up now, by playing every other bar in a descending manner.

Video Exercise 2

 

EXERCISE 3

Let’s reverse that order (ascending vs. descending): so we’ll now descend through the first bar, ascend through the 2nd bar, descend through the 3rd bar, and ascend through the 4th.

Video Exercise 3

 

EXERCISE 4

Hanging in there? Again, play these as slowly as you need to, initially. You can work them up to speed as you gain familiarity. The most important thing is to REALLY assimilate the arpeggio forms.

The next variation is to play them ALL descending...

Video Exercise 4

 

EXERCISE 5

The final variation will be to ascend and descend within EACH arpeggio.

So we’ll ascend through the first part: 1, b3...
but descend through the last part: b7, 5.

Video Exercise 5

 

Once you’re comfortable with the exercise, feel free to increase the fun quotient by adding a few ghost notes to make things a bit more musical!

Here are Exercises 1 through 5 played successively and up to tempo.

Audio Example

Once you have all 5 exercises under your fingers, play them up to speed with the drum track.

Audio Example (Drums)