Tag Archives: quartal arpeggios

A Great New Sound In Your Jazz Solo

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Arpeggios and scales are often reduced to the notes they contain against a chord, but by doing that you throw away other information that is more important for the sound of your jazz solo, and this is something you want to be aware of and not miss.

It is a way to get so much more out of scales and even pentatonic scales that you already know because you can use them in a different way.

What is the difference?

If you listen to how quartal arpeggios sound on a II V I: 

Compared to a more traditional bop line:

Of course, you can mix the two as well, but I think this makes the difference quite clear.

There are a few ways to approach this, and I am going to go over both diatonic and pentatonic options using the II V I in G major: Am7 D7alt Gmaj7

The Scale and a Diatonic Arpeggio exercise

For the Am7 and Gmaj7, you can use the G major scale, and it is fairly easy to play a G major scale in diatonic quartal arpeggios:

The construction of a diatonic quartal arpeggio is really simple:

G A B C D E F# G A B C D

if you want to find the quartal arpeggio on B you just stack 4th intervals: B E A:

 

or for C: C F# B, but notice here that you get an augmented 4th between C and F#:

Using this on the Am7 chord

It is easy to make some lines using these arpeggios on Am7, especially if you avoid using the ones with the F# in there (for now anyway)

That gives us these:

Example using Quartal Arpeggios on Am7

Here I am using two quartal arpeggios on Am7, the one from B and the one from A. I actually continue with quartals on the D7 altered, but I am going to cover those a little later.  First, let’s try to come at this from a pentatonic scale instead of a major scale.

Am pentatonic scale and an important exercise

You all know the Am pentatonic scale:

And if you play this exercise in that scale:

A lot of these are quartal arpeggios (high light and explain) also the C and Am triads

Example using the Pentatonic scale

You can use this as a way to get to this sound in a lick like this

Quartal Arpeggios on an Altered Dominant

Now let’s look at how you can also use quartal harmony on an altered dominant:

Here I am using quartal harmony on all 3 chords and it is constructed so that I am moving two quartal arpeggios on each chord as a motif.

You can practice the quartal arpeggios in the Eb melodic minor

See this in use on a song:

Lady Bird – Arpeggios & Pentatonic Scales

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Half Diminished Chords – This is how to use Quartal Arpeggios

Half Diminished chords are difficult to get used to and hard to improvise over. In this video I am going to go over some of the Quartal arpeggios that work great for m7b5 chords and show you how to easily add them to your vocabulary. I also go over some examples of how you might use these arpeggios over a half diminished chord in a minor II V I cadence.

Half Diminished Chords in a Minor Cadence

The examples in this lesson are all on a II V I cadence in Dm:

Eø A7alt Dm6

The first example is using two quartal arpeggios on the Eø, and another two on the A7alt.

The first quartal arpeggio is from A: A D G, which gives us a m11 sound over the Eø with 11(A), b7(D), b3(G). The second one is from the b5: Bb E A basically spelling out a m7(b5(11) chord with the b5, root and 11th in the arpeggio.

On the A7 altered I am using a quartal arpeggio from C and then one from C#. The one from C# you may recognize as the top part of an A7(#9).

Quartal arpeggio Exercise no 1

If you want to work through the Quartal arpeggios for the Eø in this key (which is D minor), then you can check out the exercise here below which includes the two I used and is covering all diatonic quartal arpeggios in the scale on the middle string set.

Quartal arpeggios moving in 4ths

This example is again using the Quartal arpeggio from the b5: Bb E A, and then continues with the quartal arpeggio from E on the next string set: E A D. This way of connecting the arpeggios in 4ths gives us two common notes between the arpeggios. It also creates a movement with a large range. 

The A7 altered line is a scale run from the root ending with a chromatic phrase that resolves to the 5th(A) of Dm6.

Quartal arpeggio Exercise no 2

To check out the arpeggios on the top string set you can play through this exercise. Notice that if you do this with alternate picking it is really a great way to develop flexibility!

The Maj7 Arpeggio from the b5

The Maj7 arpeggio from the b5, in this case a Bbmaj7 arpeggio, is making a guest appearance. This arpeggio is often overlooked but is a perfect fit for the Eø sound. In this example it is chained together with the quartal arpeggio from the root: E A D. 

The A7alt lick is turning around on the #9 and then descending down the scale. Before resolving to the 9th(E) of Dm6 it catches the C# on the A7. 

Half diminished dilemmas?

The m7b5 or Half diminished chord is one of the chords I get asked about most often, so I hope you can apply some of these arpeggios in your own playing.

If you want to see more videos exploring the options on a half diminished or m7(b5) chords then leave a comment on the YouTube video or send me a message via e-mail!

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Half Diminished Chord – Quartal Arpeggios

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or  send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.

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