Jambole.com – for Guitarists

A while ago I spoke about guitar fretboard patterns, and it’s application to Arpeggios. This time I want to extend that idea to cover 9th chords.

A pattern that seems to fit 9th chords well is an alternating 3-1-3-1 etc pattern. If you look closely at my article on Pentatonic Scales and Sweeping Picking you’ll see that this is exactly the pattern that I applied to these shapes.

This time I want to apply it to Major, Minor and Dominant 9th arpeggios.

So just to recap, a Fretboard Pattern is a fingering pattern or shape that you can apply to the guitar neck to achieve a particular sound. So in this case I’m going to apply a repeated 3-1 pattern to the neck. That is to say that I play 3 notes from 1 string, move on to the next string and play 1 note on that, then repeat as I continue across the neck.

If you use Economy picking, you’ll find that this 3-1 pattern is a very easy pattern to pick, which is why its worth learning to use and apply to your own playing.

So lets look at the first Arpeggio.

Minor 9th Arpeggio

So lets start with the chart shapes taken from the Fretboard Patterns article and find a few Minor 9th arpeggio routes.

Give them a try. You may want to start higher up the neck to start with, just until you get used to the stretch. Once you’ve played them a while, try the Minor 7th Pentatonic Sweeping Patterns again. Can you feel how learning one set of shapes reinforces the other set? That is exactly why using fretboard patterns can really improve your playing.

Lets look at the next set.

Dominant 9th Arpeggios

Get used to playing them up and down the neck. It will feel awkward at first, but with a bit of practice it really is possibly to fly all over the neck playing these.

The final set I want to draw out is…

Major 9th Arpeggio

Finally we have.

By no means it this an exhaustive set of 3-1 patterns. You should try working some more out for yourself.

Don’t worry about playing an extra note, or missing one out if you’re changing direction that’s a perfectly normal technique. I haven’t explicitly added these turn-around notes, because with a little practice, you’ll be doing this instinctively in time.

Gook luck.