What Is an Arpeggio?

An arpeggio is a chord played one note at a time instead of strummed together. The word covers two related things on guitar: picking through a held chord shape (the intro to "House of the Rising Sun"), and — the lead-guitar meaning — playing a chord's notes as a scale-like pattern across the neck, without holding the shape.

Hear it as a pattern

Here's a C major arpeggio in open position — root, third, fifth, climbing:

Why lead players drill arpeggios

An arpeggio is a scale with everything risky removed: every note is a chord tone, so every note lands. When the chords change under a solo, switching arpeggios is playing the changes — the difference between soloing over the song and soloing over the key. The comparison is unpacked in Arpeggios vs Scales.

Related terms

• Triad — the chord being spelled out
• Chord-tone soloing — arpeggios in action
• Seventh chord — four-note arpeggio material