Broken Chords on Guitar
Broken chords are absolutely fundamental to playing the guitar. They’re utilized in so many songs, it’s essential to hone your skills in this area, particularly your picking skills. So in this lesson we’re going to look at what broken chords are and dive into a few exercises to get your fundamentals up to speed. Let’s get started.
What’s the difference between a broken chord and arpeggio?
Broken chords and arpeggios are very similar and sometimes you might hear the terms used interchangeably. Both are made up of chord tones played individually. The key differences are note order and duration. While arpeggios are chord tones played in sequence (root, third, fifth, root, third, fifth, etc.), broken chords can be played in any order, often repeating notes.
The other difference is the notes of broken chords can ring out, whereas with arpeggios only a single note is sounding at a time.
Broken Chord Examples
Now let’s take a look at broken chords in their simplest forms. If we take the G, C, and D chords and play each note individually, we get broken chords. In these examples we’re just playing each note in succession.
Let’s start with D major. As always, it’s a good idea to use a metronome to keep your tempo.
D Major
C Major
G Major
Broken Chord String Skipping
Broken chords provide a great opportunity to work on string skipping, particularly since a lot of the patterns you’ll see will typically have some degree of string skipping. Here we’ll start with the D chord again since it’s the easiest with only four notes.
D Chord
C Chord
G Chord
Applying Patterns to Broken Chords
At this point we’re going to make broken chords more musical by applying a simple pattern to the chords. After this, we’ll take the pattern and apply it to a chord progression to bring it all together and then take a look at a couple of song examples.
The patterns here incorporate notes played in succession along with string skipping.
G Major
C Major
D Major
Putting it Together
If we take the patterns from above and put them all together to make a progression of it, we get the following:
Song Examples Using Broken Chords
We’ll wrap up with a couple of song examples. First is “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M. For this example you’re just using the D and G major chords.
Everybody Hurts – R.E.M.
This next example comes from Guns N’ Roses and gets a few more chords involved, but is still pretty straightforward.
Don’t Cry – Guns N’ Roses
More song examples for this lesson are available on Patreon.
Wrap Up
Broken chords are essential when it comes to learning guitar. Being able to play them well is a skill that needs to be developed and maintained. While they seem simple, it’s quite easy to get a little sloppy playing them if you’re not careful. Take your time, use a metronome, and develop your picking technique and you’ll appreciate the confidence you gain when you can play broken chords with ease.
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