Notice that in both of these examples, Vivaldi changes notes on the 2nd and 4th 16th note of each beat. 1., the wider note range of the D minor arpeggios and large interval jumps in Ex.

Then we begin the double picking pattern (also built on an F major arpeggio). Begins with a descending F major arpeggio, repeated four times. Both come from the first movement of The Four Seasons, Concerto No. Take a look at the examples below, which I’ve excerpted from the original violin score for you, and arranged here for guitar. As a quick reference, you might remember hearing this kind of double-note sound in the Batman TV theme or in Jake E Lee’s playing on Ozzy’s “Bark at the Moon”…īut for our examples of double picking in this lesson, we’re going to go back a little further – back to about a few hundred years ago, to the early 1700’s – during the Baroque Period, when Antonio Vivaldi used this double note musical device to great effect in his masterwork, “The Four Seasons” (Italian: Le quattro stagioni). The idea is pretty straightforward take a melodic line, and play every note twice. In this lesson we will learn two arpeggio excerpts from Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons: Autumn” that make great double picking exercises for guitar. The technique has been recommended as a guitar exercise by players ranging from Steve Vai, to Tosin Abasi, to jazz great Emily Remler (who Herb Ellis once called “the new superstar of the guitar”). Double picking is a technique you can practice to improve your picking control, speed and accuracy, and a musical device you can use to add energy to simple melodic lines.

Vivaldi four seasons guitar