Beginning Arpeggios

Arpeggios are a universal tool. Many bass lines, but also runs and fills are built on arpeggios, and they’re a good starting point for soloing as well. The workshop will keep you supplied with arpeggio exercises looking at the various chord types.

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A) Major Triads

To practice all the keys the following arpeggio exercises move through the cycle of fourths. This is also very convenient since the chord sequences of many songs are partially correspondent to the cycle of fourths.

It simply arranges the 12 keys clockwise and four steps apart:

Cycle of fourth

 

The first exercise uses two different fingerings for these triad arpeggios. Play them both up and down (from the lowest to the highest note and vice versa).

major 2 fingering for major triads

The arpeggio fingering above is called major 2 (M2) since the tonic of the major triad is fretted by the middle finger (2). The tonic and its octave of the chord are shown in red while t indicates the third and f the fifth.

major 4 fingering for major triads

The broken circles indicate the root of the next key in the cycle of fourth.

To link individual arpeggios in the exercise I’ve sometimes used chromatic approach notes on beat four leading to the next tonic.

Try playing the exercise with eighths after managing the quarters.

Audition files of both versions are available for download.

To download, rightclick and select "Save destination as..." (Internet Explorer) or "Save link as..." (Netscape). Select destination folder and save. Download!
"Major Arpeggios in Fourths (Quarters)" (MP3, 1193KB)
"Major Arpeggios in Fourths (Eighths)" (MP3, 801KB)

EXERCISE 1:

exercise for major arpeggios 1

EXERCISE 2:

Let’s play the G major arpeggio across three octaves. The note positions are shown below:

3 octave g major exercise (diagram)

Playing three-octave arpeggios requires indirect position shifts across several frets. Practice them slowly and carefully to the metronome or a drum machine.

Here’s the exercise in notation:

3 octave g major exercise (notation)

An audition file of this exercise is available for download.

To download, rightclick and select "Save destination as..." (Internet Explorer) or "Save link as..." (Netscape). Select destination folder and save. Download!
"3-Octave Major Arpeggio (Quarters, Eighths)" (MP3, 539KB)

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