Understanding diminished seventh chord shapes and their inversions is all well and good, but that still leaves us with chord shapes, not arpeggios. There are two ingredients that transform these shapes into arpeggio figures. One is an augmentation of the basic shape:


By enlisting the pinky, Yngwie appends a fourth note to the pattern, generating a full diminished 7th chord in one position. For example, placing this fingering at the fifth fret produces a a complete root-position D# diminished seventh with all four notes present:


But the real splitting of the atom as far as Yngwie's arpeggio playing is concerned is the use of sweep picking to play the notes in the chord shape separately. In so doing, a downstroke is carried across the first three strings of the guitar, sounding one arpeggiated note per string: The first note of the arpeggio -- the pinky note -- is played with an upstroke on the E string. What follows is the descending part of the pattern, which highlights Yngwie's preference for alternate picking and pull-offs when playing descending licks. The second note of the arpeggio is a pull-off, giving the picking hand time to rest. The next note is then picked with an upstroke, setting up the downward sweep on the 8th fret of the G string. This downstroke is carried through the first three strings of the guitar, returning the pick to the E string. The pattern begins anew with an upstroke on the 8th fret of the E string.

Because the pattern starts and ends on the same note, with the same pickstroke, you can repeat the pattern in place without altering the picking structure: Finally, with a simple slide of the left hand, you can use the same picking pattern to rocket through the diminished seventh inversions in what is one of Yngwie's most memorable arpeggio licks. He plays this lick on his 1991 REH instructional video, as well as in countless songs and solos:
Yngwie frequently chops his classic arpeggio pattern apart to fit different rhythmic situations. In the break, he actually shrinks it from six notes to four by using only the descending portion of the pattern: By ditching the ascending part of the lick, Yngwie changes the rhythm from sixteenth-note triplets (six to a beat) to straight sixteenth notes (four to a beat). Although both patterns require precisely one beat of metric time to complete, the sixteenth-note pattern has fewer notes and a more direct, or driving rhythmic feel.

In the break, Yngwie takes this four-note figure and moves it through the inversions we've already outlined. He begins at the 17th/20th fret with a root position D#dim7, and follows with the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st inversions that reside below it: Because the descending arpeggio figure contains four notes, it fits easily into 16th note-based breaks like this. However, notice that Yngwie embellishes three of the patterns with a hammered note to create a flowery trill: Although the embellished variant of the pattern contains an extra note, the lick's rhythm is maintained because the trill is played faster to compensate. Specifically, the first three notes of the pattern are squished into the space previously occupied by only two notes. This again makes them sixteenth-note triplets, while the remaining notes are still sixteenth notes. As a result, the embellished pattern is still only four sixteenth notes in length, or one full beat of metric time. Whether you choose to play the sixteenth note version of the pattern or the embellished version of the pattern, you will always be able to fit precisely four of them in any given measure. This is just one example of the critical role of rhythm in Yngwie's playing.

The break finishes with four non-embellished descending patterns over the second inversion, first inversion, root position, and first inversion, respectively: By now you may have noticed that the diminished arpeggio break in Now Your Ships Are Burned contains no sweeping at all. After so much discussion of Yngwie's innovative uses of sweeping for both scales and arpeggios, it might seem somewhat ironic that the big arpeggio moment of the solo does not actually use his signature technique. However, when we dig deeper, we realize that the picking works out this way because it is really a derivative of the pattern that Yngwie uses to play sweep arpeggios. So there is order in the universe after all. This is why we began by analyzing Yngwie's sweep arpeggio technique, even though it was not strictly necessary for this lick.

Stacking the descending arpeggio patterns back-to-back via inversions produces a clearer picture of the role of alternate picking in this sequence: The pull-off at the beginning of this lick gives the right hand a chance to rest, but what immediately follows are three notes played on three different strings: This is tricky to do, but it's not impossible. Consider first of all that Now Your Ships Are Burned is played at "only" 140bpm. While this is no walk in the park, sixteenth notes at 140bpm is among the lesser challenges you'll face in Yngwie's playing. After all, most of the fast parts we've seen so far in the solo have been either sixteenth-note triplets, or free-time playing somewhere between sixteenth notes and sixteenth-note triplets.

More importantly, you might wonder why Yngwie does not simply use some kind of upward sweeping to play this lick. The answer is consistency. By using essentially the same picking structure for this pattern as he does for his sweep-based arpeggio patterns, Yngwie can switch between the two with almost no change to his right hand technique: Not only is the pick structure for both patterns 66% the same (four out of six notes), but both patterns start on the same pickstroke -- an upstroke. This means they can be connected seamlessly whenever Yngwie chooses to do so. This also allows Yngwie to minimize the number of different picking patterns his right hand needs to master, letting him concentrate on learning a few movements exceptionally well. In this case, the difficulty of alternate picking is outweighed by the consistency it promotes in Yngwie's playing.

Just as sweep picking is a form of economy of motion, boiling down your right and left hand technique to as few patterns as possible is a form of economy of methodology. The guitar is a complex instrument, and there are a lot of things to keep track of at any given moment, particularly at high speeds. The world's great players have all developed subtle ways of simplifying the mechanical aspects of their playing so they can focus on what matters most -- making great music.