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Anyone know some excercises for practicing arpeggios? Or some tips for making them sound more jazzy and musical. I know it's an important piece of improvising but I cannot get over this mountain.
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12-14-2012 11:08 AM
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Arps are usually just short parts of lines in Jazz guitar. A fast sweep of a Major 7th chord is common with Wes, Jim Hall etc. The two octave exercises don't apply because the sound like exercises. Listen to your fav guitarists to see how they employ arps.
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Work with the early "riffs" in the Mickey Baker Complete Course in Jazz Guitar. They're purely little jazzy arpeggios. If you can play those riffs with swing and feeling, try transferring that emotion to other arpeggios (or fragments) and see what happens.
Also, don't worry about playing the whole arppeggio every time. I learned 2 octave arpeggios at first and it didn't sink in for a while that I could use parts of them, or skip around in them (not just play one note after another), or add slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs, repetition -- on and on.
Kojo
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Hi, you could find a standard and arpeggiate your way through the tune. Connecting to the nearest chord tone of the next arpeggio. I was using autumn leaves when i first started.
I was first introduced to this idea actually from justinguitar Free Guitar Lessons - JA-014 ? Jazz Up Your Blues 5
In his video he does it over a 12 bar blues, but you could use the same concept over a standard tune. Justin calls it, the "arpeggiator"
Though I do not have the book, i think Joe Elliot's Jazz soloing book also does advocate this. From the forum, i gather that its called the "connecting game".
Hope the video helps!
and..i think alot of people here would recommend this exercise as well.
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As is mentioned above: Playing through progressions with arps and connecting the arps from one chord to the next is a good exercise.
I think that the making them more musical is about writing lines or practicing in a tempo where you can try to make good lines with the arps. Which is quite difficult at first.
Another thing that I always found very useful was playing and analyzing solos to see how others use arps in their lines, sometimes a line might be part scale part arp or they add scale notes in between arp notes (or at least you can see it like that).
The Joe Pass Guitar Style book is one that I learned a lot from, the solos at the end are great lessons in bop-language 8th note lines.
Jens
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do not always play up from the bottom or down from the top..
start in the middle and go up or start in the middle and go down..
play first two from the bottom and jump to the top and play down..
play first two from the top and jump to the bottom and play up..
just an easy variation....learned from an old Howard Roberts book...
time on the instrument..
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For me the overriding value of arpeggios isn't so you can sweep or play two octave arpeggios, like a piano player. It's so you can SEE the notes of the chords on the fretboard. They demystify the fretboard. Being able to SEE Bb7 and CMaj7 and Fm7 or Ebmin7b5, all across the fretboard without even having to play them helps a lot.
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This is an exercise that I see recommended by a lot of really good players. A variation is to loop through a sequence of chords with ascending and descending arpeggios. Always shift to the closest note on the next chord from the note you are leaving. Continue in the same direction until you reach the top or bottom. You want the rhytm to be such that the start note of the chord is always shifting.
Originally Posted by JensL
You have to already know the arpeggio to do this. Though it might be possible to jump in with fretboard diagrams in front of you.
The benefit is that you learn your arpeggios and also basic voice leading.
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After banging away off and on for decades, 2 years ago I switched to tuning in fourths. The payoff has been huge. Feel like I'm cheating huge. And perhaps nowhere has the payoff been greater than with arpeggios. There are two different kinds of interlocking patterns. One type sits in scale patterns and is similar to what most players use. But the other type goes across the fret board diagonally. This type has two notes per string for 7th chords. Because of the two notes per string they are super duper musical. Sick musical. Tension and release is built into them. 1& or &1; either way, is built into them because of the two notes. There are four depending on which note you want to start on, 1, 3, 5, 7. So it is quite easy to play through changes starting every bar on the 3 using the same lick. Or lean on the guide tones as much as you want. I always knows exactly what chord tones I am on and where I am going. And if I need to add a tension like a b9, I know where it is. And I have three octaves handy. And maybe once per solo I'll go down the three octaves and it doesn't seem like running the arpeggio at all. 6 pull offs and I just flew through three octaves. And if you go through the diatonic cycle, ie half the time in standards, the next arpeggio sits right above the one you just played. So, for example, going from Aminor to Dminor, if you start on the 5th, you are just moving from a 3x2 box to another 3x2 box that shares two notes, from E G A C to A C D F. And even if you continue on to a different chord quality, the G7, you still have two notes in common for a slightly crooked box that again sits just above the one you just played. I'm no great player, but if there were a Giant Steps competition with prize money, I'd seriously consider entering because with really shockingly little effort, I can navigate changes with 7th chord arps really easily.
Now nobody wants to switch to P4 tuning, but if you can experiment in standard tuning with forms that have two notes per string, you might be able to get the same automatic musicality. (I think you will have double the number, 8.)Last edited by jster; 12-15-2012 at 04:59 PM.
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I think that the practice or arpeggios should start by playing continuous quarter or eighth notes over a ii-V-I progression. Originally Posted by dzzy121
4 notes Dmin7- 4notes G7- 8notes CMaj7.
When you are able to do this in a slow tempo and in many parts of the neck you can start adding chromatic notes. This will give to your lines a “jazzy flavor”.
Check out this lesson for adding chromatic notes to your playing.
Chromaticism - How To Solo With Chromatic Notes
After this you can start adding scale notes.
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In addition to the many very useful comments here, I'll add a couple things:
You can substitute arpeggios off of different roots. This is a very common technique used to "jazz up" lines. Over a ii chord (recording, drone, bass line, whatever) try playing diatonic 7th or 9th chords built off the 1st, 3rd, 4th and 6th scale degrees. All of these produce different sets of extensions/tensions.
Over the V chord, maybe try a half-diminshed 7th chord built off the 4th scale degree, which produces a nice "altered" sound.
Another approach is to add chromatic approach tones, neighbor tones, etc. to kind of "dress up" your arpeggios. Bert Ligon's book "Comprehensive Technique For Jazz Musicians" and Randy Vincent's new book "Line Games" are both excellent sources of enough exercises to keep one busy for a lifetime.
Matt
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One reason to practice arps is just to learn the fretboard; you need to be able to see the whole fretboard light up with the chord tones for any given chord.
In that case you don't need to worry about being musical so much... just learn the patterns.... and no need to tune in fourths, the benefits of standard tuning are much greater for most people anyways (which usually isn't apparent until you really see how the system works).
On the other hand, to learn how to use arps musically, the answer is simple: you need to learn vocabulary. Learn any bop/hard-bop solo and you'll see how arpeggio fragments are incorporated into lines. Anyone just starting out with jazz has to come to terms with the fact that transciption is just a daily part of the lifestyle.
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One of my favorite basic exercises is to play a progression through all of the scale patterns. I call this The Big Daddy. I - IV - viiø - iii - vi - ii - V - I
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Put in chromatic approach notes various notes of the arpeggio
1, one below
2, one above
3, one above then one below
4, one below then one above
5, 2 below
6, two above
7, one below, two above
8, one below, two above etc etc...
Try and ensure the actual chord tone is on the downbeat!
This way u are surrounding the important note making it sound jazzier and less like an straight arpeggio ..
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Those are enclosures, or neighbor tones or embellishments. Great.
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Lots of great advice here. Another thing I noticed was jazz improvisers using arpeggios as approaches to target notes. The last 2 notes of the arpeggio often encircle the target note but not always. You can keep descending. So starting on beat 3 you could play 4 eighth notes of an arpeggio (7th or just triad with added octave note) to target a note on beat 1 of the next measure/chord.
So ascribing to the 'forward motion' approach we use a variety of approach lines including arpeggios to target a note. This is a little different mindset from connecting arpeggios over chord changes, where the target note is actually the destination or resolution, whereas some might see beat 1 as the starting point.
I think arpeggios are good for hearing the chord changes, but also isolating each chord tone and play it by itself over each chord from root to 13th, as Jerry Bergonzi suggests in his material.
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