Playing arpeggios is a great exercise for the advancing harmonica player. I’m writing this for a beginning/intermediate harmonica player who is interested in pursuing this type of effort.
These kinds of technical exercises free us up to more easily be able to play any melodic pattern, whether that’s learning songs or improvising. While it can feel laborious, the payoff can also be incredibly fruitful. I think of this type of work as prayer/meditation, and I actually enjoy it.
This kind of work is not for everyone, but, for the seekers, I wanted to provide a glimpse into this path…
This first post is applicable for beginners who know how to play single notes. No bending required. I’ll post another one covering the entire range of the instrument.
Start by just playing each note in the scale followed by a note up a 3rd.
To figure out where those are, play the first 3 notes of the scale, and then sequence it up through the scale, so thinking in terms of the intervals of the scale 1,2,3 then 2,3,4 then 3,4,5, etc.
Taking the 1st position major scale as an example, which is:
4 -4 5 -5 6 -6 -7 7
It would look like:
4 -4 5
-4 5 -5
5 -5 6
-5 6 -6
6 -6 -7
-6 -7 7
And coming back down:
7 -7 -6
-7 -6 6
-6 6 -5
6 -5 5
-5 5 -4
5 -4 4
Once you’ve played that one million times, then just omit the center note so you’re playing:
4 5 (one, three)
-4 -5 (two, four)
5 6 (three, five)
-5 -6 (four, six)
6 -7 (five, seven)
-6 7 (six, one)
-7 -8 (seven, two)
7 (one)
Coming back down we might jump up to the 3rd and descend like this:
8 7 (three, one)
-8 -7 (two, seven)
7 -6 (one, six)
-7 6 (seven, five)
-6 -5 (six, four)
6 5 (five, three)
-5 -4 (four, two)
5 4 (three, one)
-4 -3 (two, seven)
4 (one)
BTW - it’s good to note that any sort of scale pattern like this can be played in FOUR DIRECTIONS:
-
Ascending interval going UP through the scale
-
Descending interval going DOWN through the scale
-
Ascending interval going DOWN through the scale
-
Descending interval going UP through the scale
ARPEGGIO just means the notes of a chord played one at a time.
The SIMPLEST chord is a TRIAD, which just means “3 note chord”
How we build a triad is by stacking 3rds.
So once you have played 3rds throughout the scale a million times, you are well positioned to be able to play the arpeggios. The INTERVAL NAMES you will be playing are 1-3-5, 2-4-6, 3-5-7, 4-6-1, 5-7-2, 6-1-3, 7-2-4, and then you arrive back at 1-3-5.
As with discussed above, you can play these in 4 directions, but here are the tabs for ascending up:
4 5 6
-4 -5 -6
5 6 -7
-5 -6 7
6 -7 -8
-6 7 8
-7 -8 -9
7
And descending down:
9 8 7
-9 -8 -7
8 7 -6
-8 -7 6
7 -6 -5
-7 6 5
-6 -5 -4
6 5 4
-5 -4 -3
4
I think that’s a great introduction to the subject.
I have shot a video of playing these arpeggios up and down through the entire range of the instrument, which I’ll post later.
