Arpeggios - Blues Rythm in A

Clean, good form, and in time. And you've got Vai's stage fan blowing your hair the whole time. Can't be beat.

Ed Seith said:

Clean, good form, and in time. And you've got Vai's stage fan blowing your hair the whole time. Can't be beat.

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Yeah, with the heat wave going on right now (it just started to cool down a bit with some thunderstorms), I cannot survive without my fan.

William Byerley said:

That looks different than how I would have played it. Looks like in 3 positions? and I liked how you slid down with your index back to the start.

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Correct, I just picked all the root notes from the E string, picking them eg. from the same position is a different, but equally solid and important exercise.

My ultimate goal though, in terms of fretboard awareness, is to not really think about positions at all anymore and instead just "see" the fretboard in terms of the intervalls I need. So for this example in particular, I need to know where my chord roots are, ideally various options for each, and for each chord I need to know where my 1 3 5 b7 is located. Again various options, and ultimately I want to know them all equally well.

William Byerley said:

I still don't know what 1 3 5 7 is but from those "roots" you can build chords I'm guessing. This is cool, I'm kind of working on similar things, but not as, I don't know how to say it "thought out" (maybe) as you.

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That's perfectly fine, music theory is a huge and maybe daunting subject. I had already some music theory background from other instruments when I started with guitar, so I was able to refresh that part relatively quickly and focus more on applying it to the guitar specifically.

To give a quick explanation, maybe it helps:
The root is the starting point for building a chord, it gives the chord it's name. For a major chord, we then need to add a "major third", which is 4 semitones (or 4 frets on a guitar string) away from the root, and a "perfect fifth", which is 7 semitones away from the root. The blues backing track is made up of "dominant 7 chords", or just 7 chords, which means that we also need to add a "minor 7th", which is 10 semitones away from the root. Thats basically what the chord formula 1 3 5 b7 is saying. To top it of, we might want the octave of the root, 12 semitones above it.
So in this exercise, the track is just playing the chords A7, D7 and E7, and I'm playing the fitting arpeggios to the rythm (and for the next steps, also in different parts of the fretboard).

Edit: I should say, "away from the root" means above the root, I'm counting the intervals ascending.

William Byerley said:

I think in order for me to understand this better, I would have to learn what makes a chord and how/where to count them out. I'm not good at this type of code yet. Wait I think I get it, no nevermind. This is like a math problem

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No worries, you will get there.
I would say the following lessons on this site are particularly relevant to what I tried to explain: Lesson 7, 8, 9, 21, 48 and 49 (and then lesson 68 for the 12 bar blues).

William Byerley said:

I think in order for me to understand this better, I would have to learn what makes a chord and how/where to count them out. I'm not good at this type of code yet. Wait I think I get it, no nevermind. This is like a math problem

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We have detailed files. Check the beginner lessons for theory - building chords, the major scale, CAGED, etc.

The lessons are not meant to be one and done. They are made to be re-watched as many times as necessary and you can build homework into your practice off of them. Jak is the queen of that.