As Halloween approaches, it’s time to dust the cobwebs off of our tomes of spooky tunes and find something to play that sounds great on solo electric guitar, while also providing some interesting technical challenges. Today we’re going to learn a diminished arpeggio sequence coming to you straight from one of the greatest musical minds of all time, J.S. Bach. So let’s get down to it!
When it comes to recognizable scary themes, it doesn’t get much more iconic than the opening organ theme in Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. Even if you haven’t heard the name, believe me, you know the melody. Take a listen to the organ performance below – you’ll find my guitar performance later in this lesson.
Today we’re going to fast forward well into the piece, to an excerpt that contains a blistering diminished arpeggio sequence – one that you can start applying in your playing right away!
This sequence comes from the Toccata section of Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue” in D minor, BWV 565.
A diminished arpeggio is constructed by playing a series of minor 3rds (Ex. 1) – from any note you can go backwards or forwards a minor third (a step and a half), and you’ll still be within the framework of the diminished arpeggio.
First, familiarize yourself with the following arpeggio pattern, playing it ascending and descending. (Ex. 2 & 3)
Then try the following sequence pattern on the top two strings. (Ex. 4a) This basic pattern will form the foundation of the entire passage, so learn it well. I’ve included articulations as well as left and right hand pick/finger markings that I’ve found to be particularly effective, but feel free to try out several different right hand approaches to find out what works best for you.
Diminished sequences are a lot of fun to work with because they sound interesting, they are modular (you can play them up and down in minor thirds all along the fingerboard and still be within the same scale/arpeggio) and also because it’s relatively easy to remember the left hand fingering, allowing you to stay focused on the underlying concepts and technical challenges at hand.
Practicing sequences like this one from Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor (Ex. 4a) will help you:
- Warm up
- Develop speed
- Improve your string crossing fluidity
- Combine picking and legato technique
- Improve your hybrid picking
- Add to your “bag of licks” that you can draw from in your solo improvisations
Once you have the core pattern down (Ex. 4a), try it on all adjacent groups of two strings. (Ex. 4b – 4e)
Then finally, practice running it through all six strings. (Ex. 5)
When you listen to my guitar arrangement of Bach’s Toccata again, find the section where you hear this sequence in action, also listen carefully to try to find where it breaks off from the exercise we’ve just learned into a similar (but slightly different) pattern.
(By the way, since there’s a lot more going on in this piece, I’ve included an index of 10 different sections of my arrangement in the youtube comments on this video, so take a look if you want to dig deeper and zero in on any other particular sections you’d like to learn! Video link: https://youtu.be/IcMvzk-lN6E )
To take things a step further, once you’ve mastered the sequence in this lesson, try applying it to a different set of notes, by running it through other scales and arpeggios. Since the diminished arpeggio we’ve been working on here is played with two notes per string, one logical place to start would be to apply the sequence to pentatonic scales, but of course there are many possibilities – enjoy and explore!
Do you have a favorite “scary” piece of music, or excerpt featuring diminished arpeggios or sequences? Let the Shred of Dignity Guitar community know about it in the comments section of this lesson!
