The 3 Most Important Arpeggios For Jazz
Not Chord Tones, Not Positions!
It’s a bold claim, and you are probably wondering if I am going to say maj7, dominant b5 #11 arpeggios, but this is a bit different and a lot more useful. The way you think about arpeggios and practice them is likely getting in the way of getting your solos to sound like Jazz.
In the beginning, everyone is telling you to practice arpeggios so that you play “the right notes over the chord.” That is important, but you have to get away from thinking in full arpeggio positions because that will not make your solos sound better. Instead, you need to start thinking about an arpeggio as a melody, and you have to start learning how to play them so they can sound like Jazz, but for that, you need to practice them the right way.
The Jazz Way To Learn Arpeggios
“If you transcribe and analyze Jazz solos, like this Joe Pass solo, then you will see a lot of arpeggios, but they are one-octave arpeggios 95% of the time.”
This is not yet one of the 3 arpeggios, but you need this foundation to get it right. In Jazz, you don’t spend all your time playing arpeggio positions simply because that is not how you use the arpeggios in a solo. If you transcribe and analyze Jazz solos, like this Joe Pass solo, then you will see a lot of arpeggios, but they are one-octave arpeggios 95% of the time. As you can see, there are a lot of arpeggios, even if Joe Pass says that he doesn’t use arpeggios a lot:
“First of all I use very little arpeggios. So you would hear very little of in my playing.”
Joe Pass – Jazz Lines
I was always a bit puzzled by this, but I guess he emphasizes that the arpeggios should not be used as things you run up and down but as something you use as a melody, which is also what you will learn in this video.
The easiest way to practice this is to work on the diatonic arpeggios, but instead of just jumping in and practice the diatonic arpeggios, you can build up to it in a few exercises and have a much easier time playing them. This is a 4-step process, and you can use that for any scale, but in this case, I’ll use the C major scale.
Step #1 is very simple: play the scale
Step #2 is playing the scale in 3rds because as you will see, the arpeggios are just stacks of 3rds
Step #3 is stacking two 3rds, and that gives you the diatonic triads, which are also useful for soloing
And finally, step #4 is to play the diatonic arpeggios:
I am not going to pretend that this is something I came up with. I was taught to practice the diatonic arpeggios by Barry Harris. As you saw in the Joe Pass solo, this is an essential building block in Jazz solos, so let’s first look at some of the ways to make it sound good and then add another important bebop trick that is one of the most important arpeggios to learn.
Using The Basic Arpeggios
The first thing to do is to transfer this to the chord progression. For this video, I’ll just use a II V I in C major. A complete song might be a bit long. Start with just the basic arpeggio of each chord:
And then you can start practicing making licks with this, start rubato, and try to compose lines that you think sound good, keep it basic and see what you can come up with:
Learning to compose lines is a skill you need to develop, but I am sure you can see how it will help your improvisations sound better. If you can’t compose a decent lick then it is unlikely that your solos will be full of fantastic phrases. As you can tell, it is not about the notes; it is about how you make the arpeggios into a melody, so let’s look at some of the most important ways to use arpeggios in Jazz solos, because that is how you start to sound better.
#1 The Most Bebop Arpeggio!
I am not sure if this is the most Bebop arpeggio or if the next one is more Bebop, but it is a great way to change up the flow of your 8th note lines and add some energy to your solo.
I am sure you already know the sound. Here are a few examples.
Barney Kessel:
And Charlie Parker:
__
And I can’t imagine you don’t know this George Benson lick from his Billie’s Bounce Solo:
All 3 of these examples use the arpeggios as triplets with leading notes, and there are also some examples of something I will get to a little bit later in the video. This is a very common way to use arpeggios, and it is worth learning arpeggios like this and even making that into an exercise. Try to learn this:
And you should start working on using this. Check out how it makes this line is more exciting:
Of course, adding a trill here and there also helps change things up, but that technique is for another video. The Triplet arpeggio was the first important arpeggio. Let’s get to the next arpeggio. Barry Harris calls it the pivot, which is one of the best ways to get rid of boring lines in your solo.
#2 The Other Most Bebop Arpeggio!
Besides the observation that arpeggios are mostly used as one-octave arpeggios and not often as runs over several octaves like a position then, it is also worth pointing out that inversions are pretty rare in Jazz solos.
There are two other things that replace them, and both work a lot better when it comes to having stronger melodies. The first one is the pivot arpeggio, which is certainly also a candidate for the most bebop arpeggio, you can let me know what you think in the comments.
What Is A Pivot Arpeggio?
The pivot arpeggio is easy to construct; play a Cmaj7 arpeggio; to turn this into a pivot, move the first note up an octave.
Now, you have a way of playing the arpeggio that is much more interesting than the one you used in the beginning, with that large skip.
It’s great for eliminating boring, predictable lines because you can change direction and surprise the listener.
Pivot arpeggios are pretty common but are often not recognized by beginners. Grant Green uses pivot arpeggios in two ways, and he plays them very often, so that can be a good place to start hearing them. Here’s an example on a II V I in F major:
Grant Green – You Stepped Out Of A Dream:
or Joe Pass in the pickup to his solo on Just Friends:
And both of these are also examples of something else, but you’ll see in a bit.
Since you know how the pivot arpeggios are constructed and how that can work for any arpeggio, you can also see how it is easy to create an exercise with these, because you go from this
And if you move the root up on these arpeggios, you get this exercise:
And now you can start putting it to use. The most common arpeggios where you use pivots are maj7 and m7 arpeggios, but this example has one on the V chord besides the maj7 on the I chord:
Of course, you want to explore how you can get this to work in your solos and compose a lot of licks; maybe check out solos and find examples to steal from, like the two I showed you. They are both in the PDF you can download on my website. This was one alternative to inversions, but another one is equally useful and great if you are a little bit lazy!
#3 There Is Always More Than One Arpeggio!
A lot of what makes arpeggios strong melodies is that they are stacked 3rds, which is also why inversions are less effective: they break the pattern and the balance of the melody a bit.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that you can’t ever use inversions, but most of the time, you’ll hear this arpeggio instead, and in fact, you have already heard a few examples in this video:
The Barney Kessel example had a Dm7 arpeggio over a Bbmaj7 chord
And in the Parker example, you heard a Bbmaj7 over a Gm7 chord
The concept is simple if you look at a Cmaj7 arpeggio:
C E G B
And, then, take the arpeggio off the 3rd of that chord, which in the scale of C major is an Em7 arpeggio, and that arpeggio is great over Cmaj7, because it is the same notes but you are also adding the 9th on top with the D.
This means getting a lot more out of your arpeggio exercise, and you want to explore this through progressions to add more arpeggios to your vocabulary. Here I am playing the II V I, but I also notated the arpeggio from the 3rd, just to make it clear what is being played.
If you start using these, you will have access to many classic bebop sounds. This next example has both the Fmaj7 arpeggio on the Dm7 chord and the Bø arpeggio on the G7 chord + a pivot arpeggio on Cmaj7:
What Makes Jazz Chords Sound Great?
Ironically, if you try to be thorough and learn arpeggios well with inversions and positions, you might be shooting yourself in the foot. Melodic techniques like these help you get your lines and your playing to sound like Jazz. There are similar rules that describe how you should be playing chords when you are comping in Jazz. Check out this video, so that you are not just playing chord grips, without ever grooving or really turning the harmony into the beautiful music it can be. And trust me, this what makes Jazz chords so fun to play! Check it out!
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