Building a vocabulary of arpeggios that you can use when you solo is like having a set of very flexible licks that you can use freely. Each arpeggio has a melody and a color on top of a chord.
In this video, I am going to show you 25 arpeggios that like to use on a basic G7 chord and I will also show you how to use them in some lines so you know how they sound.
This is a huge collection of arpeggios on for G7, just a plain old basic G7, not nasty alterations or #11s that will have to be in another video, you can always let me know in a comment if you would like to see a lesson on altered dominant arpeggios.
7th Chords
First let’s work with the basic 7th chord arpeggios, which is the basic arpeggio of the chord and some other really useful options. Then I am going to go over some more exotic arpeggio choices.
You may think that I just transposed the material from the Dm7 video, but as you already here will see that is not the case, and actually some of the 7th chord arpeggios are a bit surprising.
Now, you can use these 5 arpeggios in licks then that could be something like this:
G7
Bø
Dm7
Fmaj7
Em7
Avoid notes?
Including Dm7 and Fmaj7 may seem a bit strange if you consider that they both contain the “dreaded avoid note” But in the case of G7 then using C as a note that resolves to B in a melody is both a strong melody and a very common device. Having the C in the middle of the arpeggio is also quite common, and using the maj7 arp from the b7 is a favorite device with people like George Benson and Charlie Parker (and pretty much everyone else)
This is good to check out for options and it is also a great exercise to go through the list and make a lick with each arpeggio, in the end, you can never be too good at making lines with a set of notes over a chord.
Triads
An easy way to find triads is to just extend the 3rds around the basic arpeggio of a chord.
If you look at G7: G B D F
then we can add the diatonic third intervals around it like this:
C E G B D F A C
And from here we get these triads:
- Em
- G
- Bdim
- Dm
- F
Examples of these triads could sound something like this
Em
G
Bdim
Dm
F
Sus4 Triads
To me the sus4 triads are often an overlooked gem in terms of getting some other melodies in there. They have a really nice sound with the 4th and the 2nd intervals.
The available sus4 triads are:
And from these the ones that I like to use are these 4:
Asus4, Bdimsus4, Dsus4 and Esus4
You could probably get other ones to work as well, I guess this is also a matter of taste and habits. Using these would sound like this:
Asus4
Bdim(sus4)
Dsus4
Esus4
Shells-voicings
You could see triads as being the 7th chord arpeggios with one note take out: the 7th. And in the same way the arpeggio you get when you take the 7th chord and removes the 5th is a useful melody. For this I am really just using the same chords as I did 7th chords:
- G7
- Bø
- Dm7
- Em7
- Fmaj7
G7
Bø
Dm7
Em7
Fmaj7
Quartal Arpeggios – The Modal Sound
Of course, Quartal arpeggios are inversions of sus4 triads: G C D → D C G but the sound of the two when you use them as arpeggios are so different that I think it makes sense to check out quartal arpeggios as something separate.
If you look at what is available in the scale you have this set of voicings.
Diatonic Quartals
The 4 Quartals that we can take out here are E F A and B which can be put to use like this:
E Quartal
F Quartal
A Quartal
B Quartal
Quartal voicings are often connected to more modal sounding contexts because they are a little more open or vague, but they still make great melodies as you can hear in the examples. Another really useful sound is stacking 5th intervals which I will cover next.
Quintal Arpeggios – Large intervals to open up the sound
The final type of arpeggio that I will cover here is the quintal arpeggio
Quintal from G
Quintal from D
Where you really learn to use Arpeggios?
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