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When playing over a particular chord how many different arpeggios would you consider using? Over any chord you can superimpose a large number of different arpeggios which can give you greater harmonic choices. In this lesson I am going to look at one approach of doing this. By having a parent scale in mind (ie playing in a specific key) whether it’s for one chord, a chord sequence or for a whole piece of music, I’m going to show how to determine all the different arpeggios that are available to play over each chord in that key.

When improvising over a chord progression we are faced with a lot of choices. The 2 most important being what to play and what not to play. The rest is really down to our knowledge and development as a musician. The more information you have at your fingerprints the more informed choices you can make whilst improvising. In this lesson I am going to talk about an approach to scales and arpeggios that is a little more abstract than e.g playing C major scale over a C major chord or an E minor scale over an Em7 chord. By superimposing an arpeggio of one chord over another chord you can create interesting harmonic effects. The lines you come up with using this method can often sound more advanced harmonically than lines that are created with the approach of a scale as merely a string of individual notes.

If you think of any scale as a series of separate individual notes, you could say that you are thinking of the scale in a horizontal way. If, however, you harmonize the scale into a series of chords by stacking diatonic 3rd intervals, you could say that you are approaching the scale in a vertical manner. The following diagrams of the C major scale illustrates the two different approaches.

C major scale:

C major scale harmonized (triads):

C major scale harmonized (7ths):

If you want to check out lessons that discuss the harmonization of scales a little further, check out Phil Preece’s lesson “Harmonizing the Major Scale”. Another related lesson worth checking out is Tyler Oakleaf’s lesson “Chord Soloing and Chord Embellishment 1“.

With this method, instead of merely thinking you can play the notes of the C major scale (C,D,E…….C) over a C major chord, you can think of playing the arpeggios (chords) of:

i) Cmajor, Dminor, Eminor, Fmajor, Gmajor, Aminor and Bdiminished

or

ii) Cmaj7, Dm7, Em7, Fmaj7, G7, Am7 and Bm7b5

All chords of course being from the parent scale of C major. With this theory, you could also approach it from other angles and think of the same list of arpeggios over the other chords from the scale. E.g. superimpose an Eminor arpeggio over a Gmajor chord, or an Am7 arpeggio over a Bdim chord. You could also link numerous arpeggios together to create a really flowing melodic line over a chord or chord sequence.

I have written a couple of short example solos using this idea. The first one is a kind of acoustic rock example with straight 8ths and the second is a more jazzy sequence with triplet 8ths. They are both in C major and I have recorded each solo and then just the backing track for you to play along with. The solos are just once round the pattern but the backing track is 16x round the sequence to give you chance to have a few goes at it and then improvise on your own.
C major solo 1:

C major solo 1:

C major solo 1 mp3

C major solo 1 backing track:

C major solo 1 backing track mp3

C major solo 2:

C major solo 2:

C major solo 2 mp3

C major solo 2 backing track:

C major solo 2 backing track mp3

With this concept you will not be playing any notes over chords that you wouldn’t necessarily play by using other approaches. What it will teach you to do is not to always think in a purely horizontal scale-like manner but in a more vertical chordal manner. It will also get you to start to break away from thinking C major = C major scale, F minor chord = F minor scale etc…. By playing and thinking in a chordal manner you will also start to play with greater interval leaps in your licks and melodic lines.

Try this same approach in every key and with other types of scales and their modes. The possibilities are endless if you do.

Look out for my next article which will be a follow up to this where I examine superimposing arpeggios in a different way over the context of a straight ahead 12 bar blues.

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more articles by Mike Holt

• Superimposing Arpeggios Part 2 - Blues Progressions
• Jazz Up Your Blues Progressions
• Break Out Of The Box - Learn all of the notes on the fretboard