Jazz guitar arpeggios · Concept
What happens when the arpeggio keeps stacking thirds past the seventh, and the one note that will not let you.
There are two routes to an extended sound and they end in the same place. The first is literal: keep stacking thirds — 1 3 5 7 9, then 1 3 5 7 9 11 — until the arpeggio has six notes in it. The second is the shortcut: play a four-note arpeggio built on the third of the chord instead. Em7 over Cmaj7 is 3 5 7 9. You did not learn a new shape and you got the ninth anyway.
The shortcut is better for playing and the literal version is better for hearing. Practise the six-note arpeggio slowly so the sound of the whole stack is in your ear, then use the four-note substitute at tempo, where six notes are more than a bar of fast changes will give you time for.
| Arpeggio | Built on | Notes | Against the chord | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cmaj9 | 1 | C E G B D | 1 3 5 7 9 | Start here |
| Cmaj13 | 1 | C E G B D A | 1 3 5 7 9 13 | Common |
| Cmaj7 | 1 | C E G B | 1 3 5 7 | Common |
| Em7 | 3 | E G B D | 3 5 7 9 | Alternative |
| Em9 | 3 | E G B D F# | 3 5 7 9 #11 | Alternative |
An arpeggio is the set of notes that are safe. Tension and Resolution is about the ones that are not, and about when a line has earned the right to play them.
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Over a chord with a major third, the natural eleventh sits one semitone above that third. Stop on it and the chord sounds wrong — not colourful, wrong — because a semitone above a defining chord tone is a clash and not a tension. This is why there is no maj11 arpeggio in this tool, why the eleventh over a dominant is raised to a ♯11, and why the m11 arpeggio is perfectly fine: a minor third is a whole tone below the eleventh, and a whole tone is a colour.
The rule is not written into a table of allowed arpeggios. It falls out of the same avoid-note test the scale finder uses, which is why the answers here and there never contradict each other.
| Arpeggio | Built on | Notes | Against the chord | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cm9 | 1 | C Eb G Bb D | 1 b3 5 b7 9 | Start here |
| Cm11 | 1 | C Eb G Bb D F | 1 b3 5 b7 9 11 | Common |
| Cm6/9 | 1 | C Eb G A D | 1 b3 5 13 9 | Alternative |
| Ebmaj9 | b3 | Eb G Bb D F | b3 5 b7 9 11 | Alternative |
| Ebmaj7#11 | b3 | Eb G Bb D A | b3 5 b7 9 13 | Advanced |
Six notes will not fit under one hand in one position, which is the practical reason extended arpeggios get practised as two four-note shapes stacked rather than as one long run. Here is the m9 arpeggio, root on each of the three bass strings — note how much of it lives above the shape rather than inside it.