Demystifying Arpeggios: What an arpeggio is, when nobody's mystifying it
It is an Italian word, it ends in a flourish of vowels, and it sounds like something you would need a conservatoire to attempt. It is, in fact, a chord played one note at a time. That is the whole of it, and this is the first of a few short pieces on what you can do with that.
The word comes from the Italian arpeggiare, to play like a harp, and that picture tells you everything. A harpist does not slam a whole chord down; the notes spill out one after another, spread across a moment instead of stacked into a single instant. An arpeggio is just a chord that has been spread out in time. Same notes. Different delivery.
Play a C major chord on whatever is nearest, all at once. Now play the same three notes one after the other, C, then E, then G, evenly, unhurried. The first is a chord. The second is an arpeggio. You have already done the difficult-sounding thing, and nothing in the room caught fire.
Why a songwriter should care
Because spreading a chord out in time changes what it does in a song, and you get all of that for no new harmony at all.
It changes the texture. A strummed chord is a wall; an arpeggiated one is a curtain with light coming through it. It is why so many quiet intros are arpeggios: a fingerpicked figure that lays the harmony out gently before the song properly arrives. It gives a guitarist or a pianist something to do with the right hand that is more interesting than four-to-the-bar. And, the part I find most worth knowing, it is an arrangement choice hiding inside your existing chords. You wrote the progression already. Deciding to arpeggiate part of it is a second, separate decision about feel, made after the harmony is settled, and it can turn the same four chords from a pub singalong into something that holds its breath.
Arpeggiating a progression is a second decision, about feel, made after the harmony is already settled.
The three notes underneath all of it
Here is the part that makes the whole subject smaller, and I mean that as the highest compliment. Nearly every arpeggio you will ever play is built on a triad, and a triad is only three notes: the first, the third and the fifth of a chord. The 1, the 3, the 5. In C major those are C, E and G. That is the chord, and it is also the backbone of the arpeggio.
Everything fancier is a variation on those three. Play them low to high: an arpeggio. High to low: still an arpeggio. Skip up to the next octave and carry on: a longer arpeggio, same three note-names repeating. Start on the third instead of the root, for a softer landing: the same triad, simply entered through a different door. Once you see that the 1, 3 and 5 are the whole frame and the rest is order and octave, the mystery quietly packs up and leaves.
It reminds me of bread, as most things eventually do in my kitchen. Flour, water, salt and time: four things, and every loaf I have ever made is a variation on them. The triad is the flour and water of this. Learn to feel those three notes under your hand and you are not learning a hundred arpeggios; you are learning one idea that wears a hundred coats.
Hear the frame before you decorate it
Before you practise a single shape, it is worth fixing the sound of the bare triad in your ear, because that is the thing every arpeggio is decorating. The chord builder will sound out a C major and let you hear its three notes together and then, if you step through them, one at a time, so the chord and its arpeggio sit side by side. Do that with a few different chords and your ear starts to hear the triad inside the spread, which is the whole skill. If you want a longer run of chords to try it over, any of the progressions in that round-up of versatile progressions will do; arpeggiate one and hear it change clothes.
The honest order of things
My daughter Anya plays bass in a loud, happy band, and she arpeggiates all the time. Walking lines, broken chords up the neck, little spread figures under the chorus. She does not call any of it an arpeggio, and she has a standing ban on my doing so either. She found the sound by feel, because it was the thing the song wanted, and the name would add precisely nothing to what her fingers already know.
That is the right way round, and I would never pretend otherwise. The sound comes first. The word is only here for the days you want to talk about what you are doing, or teach it, or find more of it on purpose. A chord, spread out like a harp. Play one and listen.
Hear the chord become an arpeggio
The free chord builder sounds out a triad all at once and then one note at a time, so the chord and its arpeggio sit side by side for your ear. No sign-up.
Open the chord builder