Mixolydian (G) – All The 7th Arpeggios

So you’ve nailed all the arps in your A Minor position and you drop two frets down. You’re in a well-worn pentatonic box, but you’re also in G Mixolydian, which has the nice feature of connecting the two tried and true pentatonics. Having the underlying arpeggios at hand makes navigating across the fretboard more comfortable, and it allows you to explore all of the upper structure sounds (Cmaj7 over Am [3,5,7,9] for instance) that let you colorfully solo without even touching the root.

G Mixolydian 7th Arpeggios

Chord Template 1: Strings 3/4/5

Chord template for strings 3, 4, and 5 in C Major

I’ve spent a lot of time working on chords and harmony lately, and I’ve concluded that I really need a good roadmap to move up and down or across the neck to speed the up the composition process. The most obvious place to start that wasn’t the 6th-string bar chords we all know was the 5th-string-root shape that seems to come up first for dominant 7th chords or the Hendrix chord. There are a few fantastic voicings in here.

The m9’s of the second and sixth degree are a chord I’ve highlighted before, and the m7 of the seventh was frankly a surprise. It never occurred to me to drop the flattened 5th to create a less tense seventh chord of the major scale, but it seems more useful than just avoiding the seven altogether. I also really like the maj7(add9) and maj7(add13) you get in the root and fourth positions. There’s a load of color on tap in this template. I’m looking forward to connecting seamlessly it across strings and to a larger set of voicings.