Musical Exercise for Applying Arpeggios and Scales to the Guitar
I love to work from arpeggios when improvising and creating musical lines. It’s so easy to create a melody with them and they can be easily expanded upon with scales. In this lesson we’re going to work through a simple musical exercise for applying arpeggios and scales to the guitar.
Applying Arpeggios
Let’s start the exercise with arpeggios only, then expand to incorporate scales. We’re going to use two arpeggios, G major and A minor, so that we’re working within the structure of a chord progression.
For this part of the exercise we’re just getting familiar with arpeggio forms, so we’re simply going to play through them in an ascending and descending fashion.
Also, rather than playing out of a single position, we’ll move the arpeggios up the fretboard using multiple arpeggio shapes. This will help with a few things.
One, it helps expose you to multiple arpeggio (and later, scales) shapes. Instead of staying in a comfort zone of working with patterns you’re already familiar with, you get to expand your playing a bit.
Going about it this way also helps you tie the fretboard together. Since you’re navigating up the fretboard, you’re moving from position to position, working in transitions and making connections between them as you progress.
Lastly, it simply makes the exercise more interesting and fun to play.
We’ll break the exercise up in to pairs of G major & A minor arpeggios, then we’ll put it all together at the end.
Arpeggio Application: Part 1
For the first part of the exercise we’re using the following arpeggios:
Below is the guitar tab for playing through these arpeggios. We’re starting with the lowest note of the arpeggio (root note in this case) and ascending and descending the arpeggio.
Arpeggio Application: Part 2
Below are the arpeggios we’re using for part 2 of the exercise.
Again we’re just going ascend and descend the arpeggio from the lowest note (3rd and ♭3rd) for these arpeggios.
Arpeggio Application: Part 3
For the last part we’re using the following G major and A minor arpeggios.
With these arpeggios we’ll be playing through them starting with the 5th.
Combined Arpeggio Application
Putting all three of the G major and A minor arpeggio pairs together we get the following run. I added a little decoration at the end to finish it off.
Integrating Scales and Arpeggios
Now that we have the arpeggios down, let’s spice them up a bit and create some lines by integrating them with the major and minor scales. Note that you can just as easily apply this exercise strictly using pentatonics as well. I personally like to use a combination of both.
We’ll do the same as we did when just working with arpeggios by starting with the first pair of arpeggios and work through the three pairs. At the end we’ll put it all together.
Scales and Arpeggios: Part 1
In the diagrams below, the arpeggios we used in the first part of this exercise are highlighted with the respective scales. We’ll based our lines off of these arpeggio shapes and incorporate the scale notes to develop a more complete melody.
Below we have the lines created by integrating the scales with the arpeggios. Note that the first two bars are utilizing the G major scale/arpeggio and the last two bars are utilizing the A minor scale/arpeggio.
Scales and Arpeggios: Part 2
For the second part we have the following arpeggio and scale patterns.
Again, the first two bars are G major and the second two bars are A minor.
Scales and Arpeggios: Part 3
For the last part of this exercise we’re using the following arpeggio and scale patterns.
G Major Arpeggio and Scale
Below we have the lines created from these arpeggio and scale pairings.
Combined Arpeggio and Scale Lines
Putting all of the lines together we have the complete exercise utilizing all three arpeggio shapes and surrounding scales for both G major and A minor.
Take this concept and create your own lines using the arpeggios as the foundation. You can use the major/minor scales as we did in the examples here or you can just combine the arpeggios with pentatonics. The lines you create don’t have to be complex.
Playing with a Backing Track
Once you’re comfortable with this exercise of expanding arpeggios with scales, you can begin to apply it over backing tracks. Below we have a track based on the chords we used in this lesson.
Don’t limit yourself to just this progression. More variations are available from the backing track page: I ii Chord Progression
You can also use any track that’s on the Guitar Essentials: Foundational Fretboard Navigation playlist as well as The Improvisation Framework playlist. When you’re comfortable with 2-chord progressions, work on 3- and 4-chord progressions.
Wrap up
Building lines from arpeggios is a great exercise and one of my favorite ways to integrate arpeggios into a musical context. It’s an exercise that’s a stepping stone to playing naturally over chord progressions. Start simple. The more you do it the more comfortable you’ll get and the more the lines will naturally expand. This exercise will greatly improve your ability to blend arpeggios and scales into your playing.
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