All rock guitar players are familiar with root-fifth-octave power chord shapes.
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In this column, I’d like to show you some cool ways to create angular single-note arpeggios that are based on
All rock guitar players are familiar with root-fifth-octave power chord shapes.
In this column, I’d like to show you some cool ways to create angular single-note arpeggios that are based on these familiar shapes, using hybrid picking, the technique that incorporates both flatpicked downstrokes and fingerpicking with the middle and ring fingers.
As you will see, hybrid picking greatly facilitates one-note-per-string patterns and the continual string crossing that they entail.
In FIGURE 1, I fret a standard A5 power chord shape on the bottom three strings in fifth position and repeatedly play the notes in descending order and an eighth-note triplet rhythm. I use my ring finger to pick the high A root note on the D string, the middle finger to pick E, the fifth of the power chord, on the A string and the plectrum to pick the low A root on the bottom string.
As shown in FIGURE 2, we can easily move this idea over to the A, D and G strings, using the same root-fifth-octave shape to sound other power chord arpeggios in the same triplet rhythm.
Now let’s try reversing the order in which the notes of our A5 arpeggio are played. In FIGURE 3, the low A root is sounded first, with the pick, followed by the fifth, E, picked with the middle finger, and then the high A root, picked with the ring finger. Just as we had done in FIGURE 2, we can easily move this three-note shape over to the A, D and G strings to play the chromatically descending power-chord arpeggios shown in FIGURE 4.
Another melodic variation, shown in FIGURE 5, is to