Arpeggios
Up to this point, everything you have learnt has been based on the use of scales. There are also other important groupings of notes called arpeggios. An arpeggio is a chord played one note at a time.
The value of arpeggios is that they enable you to play lines which fit chord progressions perfectly, since every note of an arpeggio is a note of the accompanying chord. Written below is a C major arpeggio which consists of the notes C, E and G. These are the root, third and fifth of a C major chord.
Here is an F major arpeggio which consists of the notes F, A and C. These are the root, third and fifth of an F major chord.
Like scales, it is important to be able to play arpeggios in every key. The following example demonstrates major arpeggios played around the key cycle.
This example shows another important method of practicing arpeggios – ascending and descending through all inversions of the chord. As you learn each new type of chord, practice all arpeggios in this manner. Don’t forget to learn each type of arpeggio on all 12 notes of the chromatic scale.
Once you know the notes contained in a chord, it becomes much easier to improvise over that chord. Chord changes usually occur on the first beat of a bar and also on the third beat of the bar in * time. If you play a note of the chord on these beats, your melody will always fit well with the chord being played by the other musicians. There are no real wrong notes in music and you can actually play any note against any chord, but when you sustain a note it becomes more important that the note relates directly to the chord unless you are deliberately trying to create dissonance or unless the progression quickly moves to another chord. The following melody demonstrates the use of chord tones using the triads of C, F and G major.
