4.30.2009

Guitar Lesson - Kiko Loureiro's Signature Arpeggio Scale Patterns

Remember this name “Kiko Loureiro.” If you haven’t heard of him yet you will soon! I never heard, saw or had the pleasure of working with any guitarist with as much technique, creativity and versatility. To have the ability to play fusion like John McLaughlin, shred like Alexi Laiho and solo guitar at the caliper of Joe Satriani or Steve Vai yet still have his own uniqueness is mind blowing!

Kiko is from Brazil and is the guitarist and songwriter for the popular Metal band Angra. In the past three years Kiko has branched out and launched a solo career releasing two instrumental CD’s “Universo Inverso” and “No Gravity” where he displays talents and versatility that will rival any of the top players in the world.

In this segment I want to highlight a unique way that Kiko uses triads to form leads and melodies instead of scales. He views the neck slightly different then most guitarists, this helps him cross genres and still have his own sound. To help you start to view the neck in this manor I’m going to show you a few of Kiko’s signature arpeggio scale combination patterns. After you have these under your fingers try to create melodies within each pattern.

In Ex. 1 find one of Kiko’s signature arpeggios where he starts with a standard Major arpeggio then adds the Major 7th and 9th into the mix to mold an interesting sounding and easy to play pattern. Try playing this pattern using alternate and sweep picking techniques.









Ex. 2 has another great Kiko arpeggio pattern, this string skipping Major arpeggio hybrid has a three note per string sequence that makes it easy to play with alternate picking. Kiko adds in the 4th degree on the 3rd string and the 9th (or 2nd) degree on the 1st string giving it a Major sound with sus2 and sus4 accents.









Ex. 3 is this same arpeggio only with a hammer on pull off pattern added to make it a bit more interesting and challenging.









Ex 4 is a minor version of the string skipping arpeggio. Pay close attention to the fingerings to make this pattern easy to play.
















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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kiko Loureiro is a marvellous guitar player! He is so underrated, so unknown, is unfair :(
His work in Agra is awesome, amazing technique, great sound, and specially a great felling. Worth of a careful listening.
see ya

Sarge said...

I agree viagensoniricas, Kiko is one of the most amazing and innovative guitarist today, no doubt.

But, I think people in the music world....the guitar world are pretty familiar with him though.

Anonymous said...

Is this DVD ever going to be piblished ?

Sarge said...

I think you'll see something shortly...there's a little more to producing an instructional DVD than shooting the footage and copying it to a DVD. I know one of the 4 DVd's that he made is in replication right now so it shouldn't be too much longer.

Add the blog to your rss feed there will be an announcement as soon as it hits the retailers.

Tal Fighel said...

I heard of him many times in the past. Not too sure how well recognized he really is.

His work is pretty awesome.

Tal