Building Tasteful Melodic Sweeps

Hey! Welcome to my first lesson on guitar masterclass

For this lesson you will learn how to build sweeps based off of the chord tones being used underneath them. I find this is a good way to create pleasing sounding arpeggiated melodies in many different genres of music

The chords used (In Order) - D minor 9, G, E minor 9, A, A#, C, D, D minor, D diminished, D augmented, D minor

Tempo - 120 Bpm

I will analyze for you, hopefully as simply as possible, how i built these arpeggios based on the chords underneath.

For example, the first chord and arpeggio is a D minor 9

As you can see, the notes of the arpeggio are (in order) D, F, A, C, E, F, C, D

All of which are contained in the Dm9 chord (D, F, C, E, A)

So to build this arpeggio, I began with root, ended with the root, and filled in the notes in between with notes that belong to the chord. Ending with a pleasing sounding arpeggio.

From a technical standpoint, this is a somewhat difficult piece as it incorporates legato techniques as well sweeping. Start with a very slow and comfortable tempo, play the entire piece until you can play it without mistakes 3-5 times in succession, then increase the tempo slowly. Your goal is to eventually play it faster than this video! (But not until you can play it clean!)

I hope you all enjoy this piece, and are able to incoorporate some of these idea's into your own playing!

Mitch Roberts