You've played many arpeggios in your life without even realizing it. The intro to “Stairway to Heaven”? That's an arpeggio. The opening to “Freebird” is all arpeggios. Any time you finger-pick through a chord or play a chord slowly, you're playing an arpeggio. An arpeggio shares the exact same notes as a chord, but you vary the timing of each note. It's the presentation that differs here: one note at a time versus all at once.

Let's look at a simple example of an arpeggio (see FIGURE 9-1). Take the notes of a C-Major chord (C, E, G) and instead of playing them in your familiar chord shape, play them one note at a time. There's really nothing special going on here, nothing radical or new. But when done right, you won't know what hit you! Take a look at the example in FIGURE 9-2 of arpeggios over a I-vi-IV-V progression in the key of C.

You may not believe it to hear it, but all the notes in that example directly coincide with the notes in the chords. The example is laid out with one measure per chord (four measures in total). For each measure, you've taken the notes of the chords and spelled them out one by one.

One of the greatest examples of arpeggios is in the Eagles song “Hotel California.” The famous two-guitar lead at the end of the solo is comprised entirely of arpeggios. The arpeggios are taken from the same repeating chord progression that is used throughout the song.

Becoming Aware

It happens to every guitar player at a certain point—you become aware. You become aware of chords, you become aware of scales, and, in general, you become aware of how other guitar players create solos and riffs. This is akin to finding out that there's a secret camera on you at all times; all of a sudden it really matters what you say and do.

For players early in their guitar-playing experiences, it's okay to just crank away at the blues scale, riffing endlessly without knowing or caring too much about the smaller details. But for guitar students, a real cathartic moment comes when they become aware of chords and their relationship to everything else in music. Simply put, chords rule everything. Chords dictate what notes can be in the melody, what notes are in the bass lines, and what tones sound good in a solo. Chords have a lot of power. Once you become aware of them, it's hard to ignore them.

Chord Dictatorship

Chords are like questions. When you play a C-Major chord you expect a certain answer—notes from that chord or scale. When a chord is played, the notes from that chord become the strongest notes to improvise melodies with. For any given chord you play over, the notes in those chords are the best and most direct choices. If you play a C-Major chord, the notes C, E, and G sound the best. They sound good because they're played in the chord, and you are merely reiterating them.

The Big Picture

As you can see, the relationship between chords and music is undeniable. When most singers create a melody, they do so over preexisting chords. If you went back and compared any melody line to the chords, you'd find that the melody line utilizes notes from those chords. If music ignored the chords totally, it wouldn't sound very good. This interaction between chords and melodies is vital to tonal music.

Arpeggios are usually played in order, meaning that the notes follow their usual order, unlike normal guitar chords that shuffle the notes around for convenience. Basic arpeggios are only three or four notes long, and unless you repeated them in different octaves, any examples I gave would be very short. Since arpeggios correlate with the chords, we will look at major, minor, and diminished arpeggio fingerings. Augmented arpeggios will be left out because they're used so seldom, but don't let that stop you from trying them on your own!