Guitar Arpeggios

It is easy to forget how important arpeggios can be in improvisation. These small melodic units will really help outline the harmony and chord progressions in a song making your solos sound more composed and thought out. Arpeggios should always be part of your improvisations if you want to sound more melodic and professional.

All arpeggios come from scales and the chords they produce. You can use a Cmaj7 arpeggio over a Cmaj chord to really outline the sound. Try to find some of these arpeggios within the basic scales. For example the C major scale contains the following arpeggios

Cmaj triad, Cmaj7, Dm triad, Em triad, Am triad, Fmaj triad, B diminished, Gmaj triad, Fmaj7, Am7, Bm7b5, Em7 etc

You can mix these together to make some really melodic passages. One advantage of using arpeggios is that you automatically start using wider intervals and chord tones forcing you to break away from merely playing up and down the scales. Arpeggios are you best friend when it comes to jazz playing as it is often to confusing to play over chord changes with a scalar approach.

Arpeggio substitution

So far we have talked about playing the arpeggio over its relative chord. For example playing a Cmaj7 arpeggio over a Cmaj7 chord. We can create some much more interesting sounds by playing different arpeggios over other chords from within the scale. A good example would be playing an Em7 arpeggio over a Cmaj7 chord. This gives us a Cmaj9 sound as the Em7 arpeggio contains the third, fifth, seventh and ninth notes of a Cmaj chord.

You can really get some interesting sounds using this technique. Another common example would be using a relative major arpeggio over a minor chord. An example of this would be playing a Cmaj7 arpeggio over an Am7 chord giving us an Am9 sound. This is because the Cmaj7 arpeggio contains the minor third, fifth, minor seventh and ninth note of an Am chord.

All these arpeggios can be played in any order. Try using different sequences to really get the sounds underneath your fingers. For example try playing the Major 7 arpeggio 1,5,3,7 etc. Come up with your own patterns. Experiment with this technique and see how far you can take it

The table below provides a quick overview of all the main arpeggios and how they are constructed.

Arpeggio	Intervals
Major triad	1, 3, 5
Minor triad	1, b3, 5
Major 7	1, 3, 5, 7
Minor 7	1, b3, 5, b7
Dominant 7	1, 3, 5, b7
Minor 7b5	1, b3, b5, b7
Diminished 7	1, b3, b5, 6
Augmented	1, 3, #5

Major triad arpeggios

A Major triad is made up of only three notes. The intervals are

1, 3, 5

In the key of C this would translate as

C, E, G

Although they are very simple harmonically, these arpeggios can be used to create some far more interesting sounds using a technique known as arpeggio substitution.

Using arpeggios in your solos will force you to break away from scale type passages and create much more interesting lines with wider intervals. Jazz players have used arpeggios extensively for many years to navigate through difficult chord passages. Using arpeggios is one easy way to outline the underlying chords and harmony in a song.

Practice playing through Triad arpeggios in all keys and in different positions across the neck. Once you are comfortable with this then you can try combining several Triad arpeggios together to create longer passages e.g. CMaj Triads and FMaj Triads.

Minor 7 arpeggios

The minor 7 arpeggio has four notes. Its is basically a minor triad arpeggio with an added minor seventh note. It can be made from the intervals

1, b3, 5, b7

In the key of C this would translate as

C, Eb, G, Bb

The obvious use for minor 7 arpeggios is in playing over minor 7 chords but try playing them over different chords from the Aeolian scale to get some more interesting effects.

Dominant 7 arpeggios

The dominant 7 arpeggio is a four note structure which is used to outline a dominant 7 chord. It has the intervals

1, 3, 5, b7

In the key of C this would translate as

C, E, G, Bb

Diminished arpeggios

Diminished triads have a really dark and classical sound to them. The intervals are

1, b3, b5, 6

In the key of C this would translate as

C, Eb, Gb, A