How to Play Arpeggios in Jazz Guitar

Arpeggios provide one of the distinctive characteristics of jazz music. Other styles such as the blues rely more on a scalar progression in which every note in the scale is played in succession. Jazz relies more heavily on arpeggios in which every other note is played. The following steps will show how to play arpeggios in jazz guitar.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Learn the intervals in the diatonic major scale. For C major, we have C, D, E, F, G, A, B and C. The half-step intervals are 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1 for any major scale.

2. Examine the arpeggio in C major. By skipping every other note in the diatonic scale, we have C, E, G and C again. Note that we actually skip two notes (A and B) at the end of the octave to get back to C. The half-step intervals for any major arpeggio are 4, 7 and 12.

3. Use a guitar with standard EADGBE tuning to map out an arpeggio in C major where the letters in EADGBE indicate the note to which each string is tuned proceeding from the lowest to the highest string. One C major arpeggio would be E8, A7, A10, D10, G9, B8, E8 and E12.

4. Play this arpeggio with "swing" eighth notes. Each eighth note in "straight" time has the same duration; in swing time the first eighth note in the pair is much longer than the second.

5. Practice this arpeggio until you become proficient at it, and then learn the arpeggio for every other note in the C major scale at the same position on the finger board. Once you can do this, you should practice these arpeggios in every position.