Arpeggios are some of the most useful musi- cal snippets ever invented. Think about it,
how can you go wrong playing just the notes
of the chord? Of course, this has a downside
as well. It becomes really easy to fall into a rut
where your lines sound sterile and predictable.
In this lesson, we’ll explore ways to focus our
single-note lines and interject some cool voice-leading ideas into our vanilla arpeggios.
To do this, we’ll base our arpeggio ideas on
the most important notes in a chord. These
notes are called guide tones and consist of the
3rd and 7th degrees of the chord. These two
notes best define the quality of the chord.
For example, over a C7 chord the guide tones
would be E (3rd) and B% (%7th). Quite simply,
even if you just play E and B% without the root
or 5th, you can hear the chord’s essential sound.
Many tunes use guide tones as anchor
points, not only to create a melodic line
through the harmony, but also to keep the
listener interested. The classic jazz standard
“All The Things You Are” uses guide tones
almost exclusively throughout the A section.
As we play through this blues progression,
we want to keep in mind that the goal is to
always relate to the harmony. The trick is to
make it subtle.
Once we have the basic chord shapes under
our fingers, we want to create a smooth line
using these guide tones. This will act as our
blueprint as we add more notes. In Fig. 2, I
have written out a sample line to get us started. The goal is to internalize the sound of this
line as much as you can. In grad school, I used
to record guide tone lines to various tunes and
then put them on my iPod. Pretty soon, my
mind’s ear was able to fill out the rest of the
harmony. You really want to own the sound
of these chords. Another method (although
not as popular as it should be) is to sing the
lines. Don’t worry—we aren’t looking for the
next George Benson or Joe Bonamassa, just
concentrate on matching the pitch with your
voice. Test yourself by playing the first note of
the line and then try and sing the next note
before you play it. I assure you, even though
this method might be difficult, it is worth it.