Basic Arpeggios

Arpeggios are the notes of any chord played one at a time, most often ascending or descending. They, along with scales, are one of the fundamental building blocks of melody, composition, and improvisation. We will start with the Triad, the most basic and fundamental of chords, these will consist of three notes. Let’s look at a C major triad. You need the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the C major scale to construct a C major triad, those notes are C, E, and G respectively as show below.

C D E F G A B C

Now let’s play those 3 notes from the bottom up and viola, you are playing a C major arpeggio. Play them all at once and you have a C major chord.

now let’s try a C minor. Here we will be flattening the 3rd, or simply lowering it a half step (one fret on guitar).

There are two common approaches to arpeggios on guitar. First, with one note per string, moving vertically from string to string, and second, playing with a combination of horizontal and vertical string movement. You can see both methods side by side below.

You will notice In each example we are playing the same notes, but each approach has it’s advantages and disadvantages. You may find that playing more than one note per string is easier and more compact, however you will lose the ability to play the whole triad at once, as is possible when constructing your arpeggios vertically. I find that I use a combination of these approaches when playing and it is best to be comfortable with both.

Below are a few common shapes for Major and Minor arpeggios. You will find that some are much easier to finger than others, I would take those that you are most comfortable with and commit them to your tool box!

In your practice be sure to move these shapes around the neck and get comfortable with your root notes on all of the strings, see what other fingerings you can come up with. Don’t forget to play everything ascending and descending. Arpeggios are not only fun to play, but they help you really learn to hear the sometimes subtle differences in chords.

In the next post we will use the chords and arpeggios we have learned, along with the diminished triad, to construct the diatonic triads of the C major scale.

Thank you for reading!

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