What are arpeggios?
Arpeggios are the notes of a chord played one at a time. I think of them as 'liquid chords' (or chords could be 'frozen arpeggios'). When you practice an arpeggio you would usually start with playing the notes in order, for example, Root note, 3rd, 5th, 7th for a Major 7th Arpeggio.
Most arpeggios are just 4 notes each, it is possible to play 9th, 11th and 13 arpeggios but they are a lot less common and there are other easier ways to use the 4 note type that gives you all the notes
When put into use you do not need to play the notes in order, they can be jumbled up much like the way you would use notes in a scale and in many ways they are similar... but:.
• When we learn scales we learn a bunch of notes that fit over the chords in a certain key.
• When we learn an arpeggio we learn a bunch of notes that fit over a chord.
How are arpeggios used?
Arpeggios are used over specific chords, and you would change arpeggio every time a chord changes. Yes you heard that right. I still clearly remember sitting on the floor about 15 years old with my jam buddy Andy, and we were trying to play the Miles Davis song Freddy Freeloader. We both knew our arpeggio shapes but were really struggling to change with the chords. When I realised later that the fast be-bop jazz players were changing arpeggio every bar at 240 beats per minute, I almost gave up...
But it doesn't have to be like that. They can be used very easily in basic melody playing and in blues, they are not only for use in Jazz, but if you want to play jazz you MUST learn all your arpeggios and how to use them.
Examining a 12 Bar Blues is a good introduction. When you start learning to play blues you will most likely be playing a minor pentatonic over the whole sequence, maybe you learn some licks and stuff, but for the most part you will be playing the one scale over a group of chords.
At some point you will probably want to start thinking more chordally and playing notes that are related to the chord being played and this is where arpeggios come into action!
Because arpeggios are liquid chords, they can also outline the harmony without having to play chords. Huh? If somebody is using arpeggios well they can out lien the chord progression and it almost sounds like the chords are being played, but they are not - the are just being suggested by the arpeggios!
There are often times that in a song all the chords belong to a key, except for one!! When this happens you would use an arpeggio over the chord that does not fit the scale. In the following example the chord G, C and Amin are all in the key of G, but in the key of G, chord VI would be E minor, and because the chord here is E7 we would use the arpeggio just over that chord, and stick with the scale for the rest of the improvisation!
Chord: G C E7 Amin Note choice: ----------- G Major Scale ------------ E7 Arpeggio G major Scale
It is also worth noting that if you use the chord tones to play your solo it will sound cool. And you don't have to use them just for chords that are not in a key. You can use them for every chord, in fact I would recommend that you do. Using scales is fine, but once you start playing from the chords you playing will really move up a few gears.
Chord: G C Emin Amin Note choice: -------------------------------- G Major Scale -------------------------------- or: G Maj Arpeggio C Maj Arpeggio E min Arpeggio A min Arpeggio
It seems to me that most of the great guitar players think about chords more scales, and if you examine the note choices of your favorite players you are bound to find that they are mostly playing arpeggio tones. You will even find that many of the great old skool blues guitar players like BB King are using arpeggio tones. Yep. I'm pretty sure those old blues guys don't know the theory of what they are doing, but their ears do! And even if they are playing minor pentatonic they tend to pick notes that relate to the chord they are playing over!
A great exercise would be to take a great solo by someone you like (Sultans Of Swing would be a good one if you are stuck for choice) and look at every note played, and what chord it is played over. When I was doing this a lot, I usually transcribed a solo in tab and notation and wrote the chords above the notes (or you could use a bought tab book) and then I wrote in red pen under the notes, what the relationship was between the note and the chord it was played over (like 2, b3, 5, b7, 5 #5, 6, etc). When you do this type of harmonic analysis you will grow as a player, because you will start to examine note choice more constructively and fill your head with cool concepts that you can extract and use in your own playing. Bit off track but very useful if you can see how great players use arpeggios!
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