Hi! How you doing? Justin here.

In this lesson today, I'm going to do

a beginner's guide to arpeggios.

I've seen a lot of people pretty confused

about what arpeggios are.

How to use them, and how to

get started using them.

So, I want to explain a bit

of the basics in this lesson today.

So the first thing is what is an arpeggio?

I tend to think of an arpeggio 
as a liquid chord.

Or you could think of a chord

as a frozen arpeggio, I guess.

And if we put that into practice right away

a good way of understanding it is to think

of an open G chord.

If you play a regular open G

. . .

The notes that you are playing

G

B

D

G

B

and G again.

. . .

And if we play those notes

one at a time we are playing an arpeggio.

. . .

G

B

D

G

B

D

G

. . .

Now to get a little thing 
out of the way here

some people find it a little confusing

this commonly used term in guitar language

arpeggiating, or arpegiated.

What this commonly means is

when somebody holds down a chord

and picks notes out from the chord.

So

. . .

That kind of thing, is kind of

referred to as arpegiated 
or arpegiating a chord.

It is kind of I guess playing an arpegio,

because you are playing one note

at a time from the chord.

But it's not playing an arpeggio

in the real sense that we're

talking about using them now.

What I'm talking about is more of a

kind of a lead guitar thing

than a rhythm guitar thing.

So, don't let that term confuse you.

What we're talking about is arpeggios,

ie; lead guitar and that would be,

arpeggiating or arpeggiated.

Which is kind of a rhythm 
guitar technique.

So, scales versus arpeggios,

a lot of people a bit confused about

what the difference is between

the scale and an arpeggio.

With a scale, you tend to learn one scale

that's played over a group 
of chords in a key.

You can think of it like in a blues,

you've got, say a blues in G

has the chords, 
G, C7, and D7,

or G7, C7 and D7.

And you would often play over that

a G minor pentatonic scale,

over the whole thing.

That's kind of playing in a key,

you're learning a scale to play in a key.

This also works, of course, 
with the major scale.

The chords in the key of G

would be G major, A minor, B minor,

C major, D major, E minor,

F sharp half diminished, 
or F sharp minor 7 flat 5,

which a chord no one uses,

so don't worry about it, and G.

A good song example is Wish You Were Here,

and Wonderful Tonight.

There's lots of songs in the key of G.

If you were soloing you might play

the G major scale over the whole thing.

You wouldn't have to be thinking about

the chords too much, you just tend

to think about the scale.

And that fits over all of the chords.

But there comes a point where 
that's not enough anymore,

where it's not right 
just to play the scale

over a whole bunch of chords.

Because really you 
want to be a little more

specific than that.

I often think of it like 
if you're playing in a band,

if the soloist is thinking of a scale 
instead of the chords,

he's kind of talking without listening

to what the rest of the band 
is talking about.

So the band can be doing 
whatever they like,

and he's just away in his 
little scale world,

where when you start thinking of chords,

you're playing with the band.

Because the band all are saying, G7,

and you're saying, G7. 
You're saying the same thing.

That kind of makes it stronger.

One thing that you'll find 
with arpeggios

the more that you study them is, 
they're used all the time.

Nearly all the great guitar players 
are using arpeggios.

Maybe not as much as they 
practice their arpeggios,

and they're using them, but they're using

the strong chord tones, the notes 
that come from the chords.

Even a lot of the old Blues guys, 
who I'm really certain

never studied their arpeggios, 
like BB King, or Albert King,

They tend to use the strong notes from

the chords, the arpeggio notes.

They kind of selected the notes from 
the minor pentatonic scale

that worked best with that chord.

So they're in affect using arpeggios too.

So the big difference between 
scales and arpeggios

is that with arpeggios you 
think of an individual chord.

If we were playing a 
blues in the key of A,

you wouldn't any longer be 
thinking of say the A minor pentatonic scale

over the whole A Blues progression.

You'd be thinking of A7 arpeggio, 
when there's an A7 chord.

And when the chord changes to D7,

you'd be playing a D7 arpeggio.

This sounds really cool, 
it's pretty complicated.

And I still remember 
the first time I tried

to do this sitting on the floor

in my lounge room back in Tazmania,

with my mate Andy.

We were trying to play a Miles Davis

song called Freddy Freeloader.

And neither of us could believe 
the idea that we

had to change arpeggios 
each time the chord changed.

It just seemed impossible, but after maybe

a few weeks, or it might have been

a couple months thinking about it,

we managed to get it together and we could

play through that song.

It was just the Blues, 
but it's a bit tricky

when you're used to playing 
a scale all of the way through,

and then suddenly you have to think of

you're listening to the band to find when

the chord changes, 
and when the chord changes,

you have to remember what the chord is,

and then play suitable notes 
from the arpeggios.

All that makes it sound a little bit more

complicated than it really is, 
to tell the truth.

Because after you've learned them you tend

to forget about them and just let

your fingers and your ears do the walking.

It's not really an intellectual exercise,

but at the beginning it is.

When you first learn these arpeggios and

you start to use them, 
you will find it pretty complicated.

Now there's another really good reason

to learn arpeggios and that is when

you're playing in a key 
very often you'll find

one chord, that doesn't fit with 
the whole key.

And a lot of people get a bit bummed out

with that, they don't know what
they're going to play.

We were talking about Wish You Were Here 
and stuff before.

All of those chords are in the same key, 
so you can just

play that one scale over the whole song, 
and it sounds great.

You also find very often a chord that

will just sneak in, that's not in the key.

A really common one would be 
in the key of G.

You have a chord sequence that goes

G

to C

to B7

to Em

Now the chords G, C and Em are all found

in the key of G, so they're no problem.

But when it comes to that B7

. . .

particularly it's got one note here, 
a D sharp.

That D sharp, that would 
sound really funny

if you played a D or an E 
over the top or it.

ie; you just stick to your G Major scale.

So at that point you would change.

You'd be playing a G Major scale.

. . .

Still G Major.

. . .

B7

. . .

Em

. . .

At that point, just where it 
goes to the B7.

. . .

You'd have to run up your B7 arpeggio.

So it's a very useful thing to be able 
to learn your arpeggio shapes.

So that when you come across a chord

that's not diatonic, 
i.e. it's not in the key,

that you know how to handle it,

that you can keep playing through that.

A lot of people just think of the shapes

on the guitar to be honest and just

pick one or two of the notes directly

from the chord shape that 
they might play.

Which works, it's kind of the same

as using an arpeggio, but you're

better off using your arpeggio shapes.

Now as well as that, 
you could use the arpeggios

even when it doesn't change key, 
if you like.

Because then it just sounds again stronger

the way I explained with the blues.

If you had a chord progression that went

G, D, C, G again, you could play, 
of course,

G Major scale all over that.

But if I played the arpeggio notes,

I'm just going to give a funny example

moving up and down the 
neck so you can hear.

But you'll hear the chord changes in there

even though I'm only playing 
single lines now.

So if I went

. . .

You can hear quite clearly the 
chord changes.

I deliberately moved around the 
neck so you

could see where the changes were.

That's a really strong way of playing,

playing out of the chords.

Mark Knopfler is a fantastic example

of a guy that plays out of the 
chords all the time.

If you transcribe any of his songs,

or if you learn any of his songs then

you know what the chords 
are underneath the solo,

and you compare what notes 
he's playing in the solo

with the chord his playing over.

It's very, very chord based.

Which is fantastic, 
and it's one of the things

that makes his guitar 
playing sound so great.

Not saying that you have to, 
but most of the guys

that are good do use this technique.

So, where do you start?

Because there's a whole lot of different 
arpeggios, if you go

on my site, you'll find 
there's five different

arpeggios shapes for four 
different chord types.

So, that's a lot of stuff.

What is it you should start with?

What I would really recommend 
is that you start

with a dominant 7th arpeggios.

One, because you can use 
them in the blues,

and it's a nice easy way to kind of get

the idea of using arpeggio playing.

Also, often when there's 
one chord in a diatonic

sequence, like all the chords 
are in the same key

except for one chord.

That one chord that's not in key is

very often a dominant 7th chord for

a reason I don't want to go into now.

--secondary dominants for you guys that

use or understand your music theory--

there's another good reason 
to start off with

the dominant arpeggios

What you would want to start off with is

learning the one based around the E shape.

Which is either the root 
on the 6th string,

in the key of A, 
which would sound like this.

. . .

That would be the first one to learn.

And then go about trying to play a blues,

just using that dominant 7th, 
and move it literally

from the 5th fret

where the A is up to the D 
at the 10th fret.

. . .

Try and play the 12 bar blues, 
all the way through,

moving from A

D

A

D

A

E

D

A

E

And back to an A at the end.

But that idea is you just use that one

arpeggio shape, and you use it for

a whole blues, practice 
using that one shape.

When you feel like you're 
confident with that,

maybe learn the D7 shape.

. . .

Always starting and ending 
on the root note, of course.

Which is kind of based around the A shape.

. . .

When I'm talking E shape and A shape I'm

referring to the caged system.

If you're not familiar with that you can

go and check out the caged system.

There's plenty of information 
on the web site about that.

And then maybe what you 
want to try doing is

changing between A7 and D7.

So if you had one bar of A7

one bar of D7

So you have A7

D7

A

D

A

D

A

D

A

And just try moving between one arpeggio

shape, and the other.

I've got a whole series 
actually about this

very movement, 
and playing using arpeggios.

It's called Jazz Up Your Blues, 
because this

using arpeggios is very often the first

step into Jazz for a lot of people.

Getting into Blues from Jazz you want

to learn your arpeggios.

In Jazz, you use arpeggios all the time.

You don't use scales 
in the traditional sense.

You can, of course, but most of the time

you are thinking of chords individually,

because the keys are changing so rapidly,

that it doesn't tend to make sense.

For most songs, most of the time, 
of course

not all of the songs, 
before some people

have a go at me and say,

"Yeah, so what, it's only got one key."

One chord, one key, 
actually two chords, two keys.

Now I'm getting pedantic on myself,
anyway...

I would recommend that you get into

learning E shape and 
A shape dominant 7th chords

to start off with.

Get handy with them and learn to use

those over a blues.

The next step would be to learn E shape

and A shape, so two arpeggio shapes

for each chord, Major 7, 
minor 7, dominant 7,

which you should have 
learned already by now,

and minor 7 flat 5.

Now minor 7 flat 5 might seem a little

bit of an odd one to learn, because

I've already said once 
earlier in this video,

that not many people use that chord shape.

But it comes into it's own 
a little later on,

when you start to super impose it over

other chords, which I know sounds really

complicated, but it is something 
you might get into,

and it is worth learning that 
arpeggio shape,

while you're at it.

Even if it's for the sake of 
being a completist,

learn two of each of the 
major 7th, minor 7,

dominant 7, and minor 7th flat 5.

If you've got that down, you'll find that

really a great stepping point 
into playing jazz,

You'll be able to handle almost 
any chord you come to,

and that's how you kind of use arpeggios.

Hopefully that makes sense.

There's some more information about

using arpeggios on the web site, 
of course.

And if you go and find this lesson 
on the web site,

there'll be a link to a forum, 
where if you've

got any questions about 
this rambling long lesson,

I've done, where 
there's lots of talking,

and it's probably a little bit confusing.

I'll try and answer as many 
of your questions,

on the forum that I can.

I hope that makes sense to 
some or all of you.

And I hope it's inspired 
some of you to get

into your arpeggio playing.

Have fun. Take care.

Bye, bye.