Guitar Techniques: How to Play Guitar Arpeggios

What are guitar arpeggios? Arpeggios are a great way to bring micro-structure to your songs - they are simply part of a chord with the notes picked out in sequence, rather than struck together to ring out. Classical songs, ballads and slower songs often use arpeggios.

Learn to Play Guitar Arpeggios

There are a hundred different ways to create an arpeggio. The patterns to use with different types of scales are shown below The notes in brackets are optional, but can add color to an arpeggio:

Major: 1 3 (5)

Minor: 1 b3 (5)

Aug:   1 3 #5

Dim:   1 b3 b5

dom7: 1 3 (5) b7

Maj7: 1 3 (5) 7

m7:    1 b3 (5) b7

Aug7: 1 3 #5 b7

Dim7: 1 b3 b3 bb7

m/maj7:1 b3 (5) 7

m7b5: 1 b3 b5 b7

m7#5: 1 b3 #5 b7

m7b9: 1 b3 (5) b7 b9

Guitar Arpeggio Example in C 

In the C major scale, your notes would be C-E-G

In the C minor scale, your notes would be C-Eb-G

In the C major 7 scale, your notes would be C-E-B

In the augmented C scale, your notes would be C-E-G#

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You can also invert your arpeggios, so that you play the notes backwards. If you were playing a major scale in the first inversion, you would play the third note of the scale first. The second inversion plays the fifth note first, and in arpeggios that use sevenths, the third inversion is when the seventh note is played first.

Ways of Playing Arpeggios on Guitar

There are also different ways to both play and incorporate guitar arpeggios in your songs. If you want to tap out, rather than just pick, a tonic triad arpeggio (a 1,3,5 pattern):

• Put your finger on the root note of your arpeggio close to the nut, on the G, B or E strings  
• Hammer on to your 5^th note with your right hand  
• Pull off to your root note  
• Hammer on to your third note with your left hand  
• Hammer on to your fifth note again with your right hand, and repeat the 1,3,5 pattern  

You can also play string skipping arpeggios, mapping out your notes by:

• Finding the root note, the second and third notes of your arpeggio on ascending or descending adjacent strings. For example, you might find your root note on the sixth string, your third on the A string, and your fifth on the D string.  
• You can string-skip either the second, third or fourth notes in your arpeggio.  
• Instead of playing your arpeggio where you usually would on the adjacent string, skip that string and find the same note on the next highest string.   
• Continue on the adjacent string for the next note.

Guitar Arpeggio Example in A

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In this exercise, you can try playing the arpeggios in this exercise both with and without using a pick.

Practising Arpeggios With Songs

Some good songs for practising arpeggios:

• Babe I'm Gonna Leave You, Led Zeppelin  
• Civil War, Guns n Roses  
• Everybody Hurts, REM  
• If I Close My Eyes Forever, Lita Ford and Ozzy Osbourne  
• Beast and the Harlot, Avenged Sevenfold

I personally find that practicing arpeggios with popular songs are a great way to learn and master guitar arpeggios. Not only is it fun to learn arpeggios this way, you can also add learning how to play popular songs to your repertoire of songs.