modern arpeggio sounds

It is very important to use the material that you practice in as many ways as possible! That way you spend more of your practice time making music than working on technical exercises with scales and arpeggios.

In this lesson I am going to show you how you can use the same Maj7 arepggio over 5 different chords and give you some examples of how that might sound in a jazz line!

The Maj7 arpeggio

To keep it simple I am going to use this Cmaj7 arpeggio in all the examples. I wrote it out in one octave and in the context of a position.

#1 Arpeggio from the 3rd

One of the most common devices is to use the arpeggio from the 3rd of the chord. That is how I am using the Cmaj7 in the first example. Here it is used over an Am7 chord in the context of a II V I in G major.

#2 Lydian sound with a Maj7 arpeggio

The definition of a the Lydian sound is a Maj with a #11. Therefore the Maj7th arpeggio on the 5th degree works well for. In the 2nd example I am using the Cmaj7 over an Fmaj7. The line is over a II V I in F. I use the Cmaj7 together with some stronger F notes so that we get the sound of the Fmaj7. After that I add the Cmaj7 arpeggio that I use to really bring out the #11 (which is the 7th of Cmaj7)

#3 b5 of a m7b5

The arpeggio on the b5 of a m7b5 arpeggio is a great arpeggio to use for lines. The m7b5 is a chord that many have trouble finding good melodies on. Using this arpeggio is great! Especially because it is very easy to use and then move to the dom7th a half step below if the m7b5 is a II in a cadence.

#4 b7 on a Dom7th

Using the Maj7 on a dom7th chord is also a fairly common device. You will find a lot of examples of the bebop and hardbop players doing this. In the example I chose to put it to use in a cadence where the Dom7th is a tritone. So the cadence is a II Vsub I in Db.

#5 b2 on a Dom7th

If you are playing a dom7th chord using the Harmonic minor scale sound then you have a Maj7 chord on the b9 of the dominant. In this example I am using the Cmaj7 over a B7(b9) chord. Since the Cmaj7 contains the E it is useful to try to play the D# in the line as well to get the B7 sound across.

I hope you can use the concept for some new melodic ideas in your playing.

If you want to download a PDF of the examples you can do so here:

Are you using your Maj7 arpeggios on these chords

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If you want to play great altered dominant lines then you have to also look beyond the diatonic arpeggios. In this video I will go over three examples of non-diatonic arpeggios that are great for altered scale lines on dominant chords.

Not only diatonic chords

One of the first things you should check out when learning a new scale is to learn the diatonic chords and their arpeggios. We need this to be get an idea about where we can use the scale and also what arpeggios fit what chords.

But very often we stop with those arpeggios and don’t look any further which is actually a pity. There are a lot of great very powerful sounds that you can find by checking out some of the other chords you can build in a scale.

In this lesson I will take a G7alt dominant chord and the Ab melodic mior or G altered scale and show you how you can find 3 great arpeggios that are not strictly diatonic.

Diatonic chords

Ironically it makes most sense to start with checking out the diatonic arpeggios since those are the ones I am going to use as a foundation. Here’s the Ab melodic minor scale in the 9th position:

Since G altered is the same as Ab melodic minor I have listed the diatonic chords here below.

Notice that I chose to use the B instead of the Cb which of course is the actual 3rd in Ab melodic minor. This is because we are talking about a G7alt and the Cb would make little sense as a 3rd in that chord. There are probably more inconsistent use of flats and sharps, I hope you can read through it.

The Maj7(b5) arpeggio

In the scale we already have a Bmaj7(#5). In that chord we can substitute the #5(G) with the b5(F). This gives us a Bmaj7(b5) which is a great arpeggio over a G7alt. Infact the Bmaj7(b5) chord is also a very useful G7alt voicing. In example You can see the substitution and the two chords.

There are two ways we can play this arpeggio around the 9th position. One is the repeating fingering shown in the 2nd bar of example 4, and the other one is a more strict position fingering.

The line that I play in the beginning of the video is shown in example 1 below. The line uses the repeating fingering from above and makes a 6 note pattern of it that is repeated in the two upper octaves before it resolves to Cmaj7. The arpeggio resolves to the E and if then followed by a short Cmaj7 line using the E minor pentatonic scale and some downward sweeps.

The Dom7th(b5) arpeggio

On the 4th degree of melodic minor we have the Lydian dominant sound (or mode). The diatonic chord in Ab melodic minor is Db7, but we can easily change it to an Db7(b5) arpeggio as shown in example 6.

Again it is easy to play this arpegio in a way that repeats nicely across the strings as shown in the second bar of example 6. A position variation is shown in the next bar.

The line I made using this arpeggio is concentrated around the middle of the Db7(b5) arpeggio that is in position. The arpeggio is played in a skipping pattern. On beats 3 and 4 I use a trill and two scale runs to resolve to the 3rd(E) of Cmaj7. On the Cmaj7 chord the line continues with a Cmaj7 drop2 voicing and a small Em pentatonic run.

The Dom7th(#5) arpeggio

One of the strong harmonic and melodic structures in the melodic minor scale is the augmented triad. The last arpeggio has this triad as part of the chord. It is derived from the 5th degree: Eb7, which is turned into an Eb7(#5). The two fingerings are again one that is moving a pattern up the neck and another that is stricly in position around the 9th position.

In the line I made with the Eb7(#5) arpeggio I am for the first half just running up the arpeggio. From there it continues with a trill and a run down a 1st inversion Db7 arpeggio before it resolves to C. On the Cmaj it is shortly tagged with a Cmaj7 shell voicing.

What’s the last arpeggio?

I hope you can use the ideas and the arpeggios that I went over here to start working on some of the stuff that is not strictly diatonic arpeggios.

I have one more arpeggio like this that I don’t use very often. Can you figure out which one it is? If you do then leave a comment on the video!

If you want to check out more G7alt lines of mine then this lesson is a good place to start:

Blue Bossa Solo 1

If you want to study the examples I went over in the lesson you can of course also download them as a pdf here:

3 Arpeggios in the Altered Scale that you forgot to learn!