B Minor Arpeggios

[Zulema Estabrooks]

Arpeggioson guitar are when the notes of a chord are played individually one after the other. Arpeggios provide a framework for targeting chord tones and can be used to add a bit of color to guitar solos and fills. They are also quite popular in metal and neoclassical styles of music when played with a sweeping technique.

From this chord shape, we can build a major arpeggio. Since arpeggios are played one note at a time, we can complete this arpeggio by grabbing the major 3rd on the 5th string and adding it to the barre chord.

The diagrams below give you the CAGED major arpeggio shapes, the chord shapes from which they are derived, and the suggested fingering for playing each shape. Use the fingerings as a guide and feel free to adjust as necessary.

When playing through the guitar arpeggios, start with the lowest root note and play ascending and descending, finishing on the same root note in which you started. Each arpeggio includes a tab to follow.

The D shape arpeggio is built from the D form chord, but also includes three additional notes; the 3rd on the 6th string, 5th on the 5th string, and 3rd on the 3rd string. This shape is very awkward to play in its full form and frequently you see just the 5th, root, and 3rd played on strings 1-3.

In the tab/audio below, the whole scale is played first, followed by just the root, 3rd, and 5th of each scale. Listen to the examples to hear the difference the 3rd scale degree makes between major and minor.

The Am shape arpeggio begins with the same root note as the C shape, the root on the 5th string. However, instead of playing it with the pinky finger, you use your index finger. This moves your positioning down and creates the A shape instead of the C shape.

The root of the Em shape is shared with the root of the Gm shape. Similar to the Am & Cm shapes, the root of the Em is played with the index finger, shifting the position down the fretboard and creating a new arpeggio shape.

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Close related to the Minor Scales are these arpeggios, based on minor triads (three-note chords).

The patterns shown in the diagrams below can be played all over the keyboard and with both hands. The general fingerings are (right hand ascending): 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. To accomplished this the thumb goes under the hand to the next octave and the long finger is used as pivot finger.

A Minor arpeggio from root over two octaves and ending on the root on third octave:

For those who want to learn or revise all the minor arpeggios, all minor arpeggio diagrams and videos are complied here. The arpeggios here are not arranged by order of difficulty, but rather in a chronological order. If you would like to them according to the order of difficulty, please refer to the graded syllabus.

In a previous lesson we took a brief look at lead guitar arpeggios. Arpeggios are very effective in lead guitar lines as they break up scale-based passages and add interest and variety to solos. This lesson will focus on minor arpeggios.

Arpeggios can be used in lead guitar solos in any kind of music. Rock and metal guitarists use arpeggios all the time, as do jazz guitarists. Even a blues guitar solo can be spiced up with some arpeggio licks. Example arpeggio-based blues licks are provided further down the page.

The following diagrams show movable minor arpeggio shapes. The root notes for each shape are shown as a blue circle. This means (for example) that if you position the blue notes in the diagram over G notes on the fretboard, the arpeggios produced will be G minor arpeggios.

Minor arpeggio shapes can be combined to create longer licks and lines. Below are two examples in notation and TAB. Picking directions have been included to show how sweep picking can be used to play arpeggios.

Sweep picking is a technique in which notes on two or more adjacent strings are played with one stroke of the pick. The pick is moved smoothly over the strings in one continuous movement. For example, the first four notes of Lick 1 below are all played with the same downward stroke.

When sweep picking, only the note being picked should be allowed to sound. The fretting fingers should be positioned ready to play the notes, but should only allow the string to ring when they are picked. If the notes are allowed to overlap, the effect will be lost and the line will just sound like a chord being strummed.

We hope that you found this lesson useful, and are experimenting with arpeggios in your own lead lines. Don't forget to subscribe to Guitar Command for regular guitar news and articles. As usual, let us know what you think of this lesson in the comments below.

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Arpeggios are one of the most important devices in guitar. As you become a better guitar player and get into improvisation, especially if you play jazz, having an understanding of arpeggios is very important.

Guitarists play arpeggios quite extensively, as they are made up of notes that are found within a single chord. This means that major and minor triad arpeggios create sounds in harmony with their corresponding chords.

You can find a major third one fret down from the root on the adjacent string. The main exception to this rule is when we are looking for the third on the B string (A shape). In this instance, the third will be found on the same fret rather. Below, you see one instance of the third to the right of the root and the fifth to the left of the root in the 5 CAGED shapes.

Starting from the lower root, once you have found one instance of the third and the fifth intervals, you can then use the octave method to find identical intervals. This will help you to complete the major triad arpeggios within the five CAGED shapes, as you can see below.

When you are plotting the fifth, you can plot it to the left of the root on the same fret instead. The exception to take note of is when you are plotting the fifth from the root on the B string. In that case, you will instead plot it one fret down. Check out the diagrams below to see how the third and fifth intervals are plotted separately and collectively in each of the 5 CAGED shapes.

Quite a few years back I wrote a post breaking down scale fingering. When it comes to scale fingering resources, we are typically treated to reams of details, on a note by note basis. The normal approach is to simply read these off and repeat by rote until the scales are fluent. Instead of working that way, my post was designed to show a small number of defining features based on relationships between hands. With understanding of merely two basic unifying relationships, all major and minor keys (excepting only B flat and E flat major) can be covered within a simple premise, that will easily allow you to find any smaller detail by association. This saves a huge amount of time, that can be wasted when swamped in the least relevant details. Although nothing can altogether replace rote practise, the process is more efficient when we have a clear and simple vision of the foundation which holds lesser details together- ie thumb locations (particularly those where both thumbs coincide).

In a sense, arpeggio fingering is so much more straightforward that it doesn't actually require a similar post. I'll give a brief summary. When an arpeggio begins from a white key you should start with the lowest available finger. That will be the thumb in the right hand and the 5th finger in the left hand (which leaves no spare fingers unused beneath the starter note, in either hand). However, this 5th finger is a one off substitute, on what would usually be the thumb's note. In following octaves, both thumbs land here as your chief reference (until the right hand uses 5 at the top- again as a substitute for the usual thumb). You then just need to decide on the other fingers. All major/minor arpeggios are built on a basic hand shape of 1235 or 1245. Your sole choice is between 3 or 4. Looking at the width of the spaces between notes should usually make it easy to tell which fits a chord shape best. However, if the arpeggio starts on a black key, you must look to see if there is a white key included in the chord. If there are none, you can still apply the original principle- as if the black keys are really white keys. When white keys are available, however, you will assign your thumbs here, rather than to the starting black key. You can build the basic hand shape around this primary thumb location- in the same manner as if the arpeggio had begun here.

I've skimmed over a couple of extra details and that may be a little too condensed to make sense to all, right away (especially if you haven't already learned a few arpeggios to reference back to this). You may first want to start from a fingering chart and relate the details there back to this logic. Nevertheless, once you start to recognise the mechanics of this deeper premise, you really won't need much more. However, this post also runs far beyond which fingers go on which keys. Although studying this should soon ensure that you would never need to check an arpeggio manual again, the main focus is on making logical groupings of arpeggios for practice purposes- based on physical similarity. When putting similar arpeggios alongside each other, you will quickly come to understand them on a far deeper level. In fact, if you're the kind of person who doesn't particularly enjoy scales and arpeggios (but grudgingly recognises that they have value) you might assume that this post isn't particularly for you. Actually, you're exactly the kind of person who needs this- so you can get the basics ingrained permanently, with as little fuss as possible and only a bare minimum of drilling. The groups I'm going to show are extremely logical, yet far from obvious. It wouldn't be easy to stumble upon this approach for yourself. While plenty of the background is common knowledge elsewhere, I'm not aware of any other source that offers these groupings. Feel free to skip to the end section for the lists, if you don't find anything new to you in the middle section.

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