The use of Arpeggios is a great way to spice up your soloing. An Arpeggio in this case, is just the notes of a chord played individually and separated, ie played in a single solo style fashion. The basic essence is to play the arpeggio of a chord when that chord is playing in the progression. For our example below let's say that the soloist is required to play over a D chord. One option is to play the appropriate scale to suit - the other is to play an arpeggio over the chord.
Recommended Settings for Below - Tempo: 120 to 360 - Sound: Jazz Elec - Click: None - Loop: 4 Times
Here's the basic chord itself D Major.
D Major Chord
D Major
And below is an Arpeggio of this chord. The notes in this case of the chord D Major are D, F#, A. The Arpeggio shown includes the D Major chord-notes (you can see the chord shape in there) and the notes D and F# are just repeated on the A and D strings respectively. The open string D note is not used here.
D Major Arpeggio
This Arpeggio is played at 120 beats per minute (bpm) in the sequence, but if you speed the tempo up to the max with the tempo button below, you can get some idea of how it can sound. If it sounds familiar to you at this speed you've probably heard it being used with a sweep picking technique - but that technique is for another days lesson :).
It's useful to keep in mind that arpeggios don't always have to be played at
breakneck speed to be effective.
This is just a basic version of this idea to get you started and you can mix and match these scale/arpeggio approaches. Each chord has it's own arpeggio, and as you get more advanced you can change the arpeggios to suit and so on. For example over a D chord you might be able to play a D7 arpeggio if it sounded good - your ear is always the guide to use here.
Hope it helped - there's another useful image of this arpeggio below. If you have any questions on it just e-mail me if you like - always glad to hear from fellow guitarists and musicians.
