A minor arpeggio

The illustration below shows the notes of the Am chord. The notes that make up the Am chord are A, C and E. When you play the notes of a chord individually, they are called arpeggios. If you played all 3 notes at once, it would be an Am chord. A good exercise is to pick the notes of a chord separately without strumming them. You can build melodies off of the individual notes of the chord.

Notice how all of the notes below fit into the Am pentatonic scales. Each of the notes below are the notes that make up the Am chord.

Example of playing the notes of just the Am chord below.

---------------------5---8-5---------------------
-----------------5------------5------------------
-------------5-------------------5---------------
---------7--------------------------7------------
------7--------------------------------7---------
-5-8---------------------------------------8--5-

Look at the Am chord to the left. Then look at the illustration above and notice that the notes of that Am chord are in the colored circles in the open position. The notes that make up the Am chord are A, C and E. When you strum the Am chord, those are all of the notes that you are playing. You have the open A string in the yellow circle, the E note in red, the A note in yellow, the C note in blue and finally the open high E string in red. Practice picking each note starting with the A note all over the fret board.

Example of playing at the 12 fret position, the 3rd box below.

---------------------------------------------12----------
----------------------------------------13------12------
---------------------------14------14---------------14-
----------------------14------14------------------------
------12-15-12--15-------------------------------------
--12-----------------------------------------------------

The illustrations to the left show a few places to play the Arpeggios. Always start with the A note and play each note from A to A on each string. Example: A, C, E, A, C, E. Then back up to the A again. You will start to see each note of the chords and there placement. You will also begin to come up with melodies and songs.

The illustrations below show the notes of the Am chord in the root note fret position.

The notes that make up the Am chord are A, C and E

All minor chords are made up of 1 b3 and 5 notes.

Example: You would be playing each note that makes up the Am chord. It's almost like playing the pentatonic scale, but with a few notes missing. Notice that the D and G notes are missing above. Pick each note of the Am chord one at a time. If you were to play them all together, you would be playing the Am chord and not Arpeggios.

Good Luck,

From the Jam Room