What are chord tones? Quite simply, the notes that are in a chord. For example, a C chord is made up of the notes C, E and G, so C, E and G are the chord tones.

There are certain shapes that you can play on the guitar that are made up of chord tones. These shapes are called arpeggios. An arpeggio is simply the notes of a chord (the chord tones) played one at a time.

Why Should You Care About Arpeggios?

Knowing where the chord tones lie on the guitar is a great tool to add to your vocabulary of sounds for soloing. Most of the great melodies that you hear are comprised mostly of chord tones. This stands to reason since the notes in the chord and the chord tones used in the melody are one and the same.

As your knowledge of where chord tones(arpeggios) are located on the guitar increases, your soling ability, especially in songs that have more complicated chord progressions, will increase as well.

Types Of Arpeggios

We are going to start getting into some basic theory here and if you don’t have a basic knowledge of music theory, I recommend that you either find a teacher, get a good book on the subject or search the internet for some basic theory lessons

There are arpeggios to fit every chord that you can imagine, but to keep things simple here in the the beginning of our study of chord tones we will focus on arpeggios and triads.

A triad is the simplest of all chords and has three different notes. In traditional theory there are four types of triads.

1. Major

2. Minor

3. Diminished

4. Augmented

Let’s look at the major arpeggios first. As we discussed earlier an arpeggios consists of the notes of a chord or chord tones. How do we know what these notes are?

Well, each type of chord has a structure and when you know the structure you can figure out the chord tones. The structure or formula for a major triad is the 1st, 3rd and 5th notes of a major scale.

Here is a C major scale:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
C D E F G A B C

The 1st, 3rd and 5th notes are C, E and G. So the C chord contains the notes C, E and G.

The great thing about learning these arpeggios shapes on the guitar is that once you learn a few of them, you can make them into different chords by moving them to a different spot on the fretboard. There are also only a few shapes that you have to learn!

Here is the first shape in the C arpeggio.

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-------7---10----
--8--------------

It kinda of looks like a triangle. Now the cool thing about this is that this same shape works all over the fretboard and on other string sets as well Here it is on the 5th and 6th strings but you can use it on the 4th and 5th, 3rd and 4th and 1st and 2nd strings as well. Here are the C arpeggios on the other string sets.

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----------------
----------------
-------2---5----
--3-------------
----------------

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---------9---12---
--10--------------
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---------12---15---
--13---------------
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With a slight alteration to adjust for the tuning of the guitar, here is the same shape on the 2nd and 3rd strings.

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-------5---8-------
--5----------------
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Learn these shapes. In then next lesson we will learn more shapes of the major arpeggios. Until then good luck and have fun.

My new book Pentatonic Power is a great way to expand your vacabulary. It’s a day by day lesson plan with 255 examples in notation and tab. There is an mp3 file of each lick so you can hear exactly how they are supposed to sound.

Plus, the fre*e bonus report "How to create ideas so easy even a monkey could do it", will show you exactly how to take this idea of words and apply it to any scale, allowing you to create an infinite variety of licks.

So ... if your ready to start playing killer lead guitar ... without risk ... then be sure to check out the book at: www.learn-guitar-online.com/pentatonicpower.html

To you guitar playing success,

Bob