Arpeggio Substitution

Welcome to our quick lesson on arpeggio substitution that will hopefully get you up to speed on this wonderful improvisational tool. Arpeggios are an essential part of the jazz language but many people ignore the harmonic possibilities available to them by choosing to play the most obvious arpeggios over a chord. Arpeggio substitution is a really great way of creating new sounds and ideas and there are almost limitless possibilities for developing this technique. Arpeggio substitution is not as daunting as it may first seem and certainly not that complex. All we are doing is playing different arpeggios over a given chord to create new sounds. Some arpeggio substitutions will sound fantastic and others will sound plain wrong. You need to do a bit of experimenting to really find the sounds that work together.

The most common choice of arpeggio to play over a Cmaj chord would naturally be a C major triad arpeggio or a C major 7 arpeggio. As well as the most obvious choice, we can also play other arpeggios from the C major scale over a C major chord to create interesting sounds. An example of arpeggio substitution would be playing an Em7 arpeggio over a C major chord. We are substituting the Em7 arpeggio for the expected C major arpeggio. If we look carefully at what is happening, we can see that by using other arpeggios over a chord we are targeting some of the interesting extensions of the C major chord. Take a look at the example below which should make the whole business of arpeggio substitution seem more straightforward.

The notes of a C major 7 chord are:

C E G B

The notes of an E minor 7 arpeggio are:

E G B D

As you can see, three of the notes ( E G B ) of the Em7 arpeggio are the same as those in the C major 7 chord. Understanding this is crucial to understanding how arpeggio substitution works. The only extra note we are adding is a D note which is the 9th of the C major chord. What we are doing here is creating a C major 9 type sound by substituting an Em7 arpeggio over a C major 7 chord. There is nothing particularly tricky about what is going on here. Try and think of this as if you were building a C major 9 chord. You would have to add a D note to the basic C major 7 chord to create a C major 9 chord.

C major 9 chord

C E G B D

We are implying a C major 9 sound by playing the D note over the C major 7 chord.

Here is another example of arpeggio substitution in action. Try playing an Am7 arpeggio over a C major 7 chord and listen to the sound.

The notes of a C major 7 chord are:

C E G B

The notes of an Am7 arpeggio are:

A C E G

If you analyze the notes in the Am7 arpeggio, you will see that three of the notes ( C E G ) are already present in the C major 7 chord. The only note that is not is the A note which his the 6th note of the C major scale. By playing an Am7 arpeggio over the C major 7 chord you are essentially creating a C major 6 sound. I recommend writing out the arpeggios of the C major scale and analyzing them in this way to help you understand what is really going on.

There are literally hundreds of different arpeggio substitutions that you can use but some will work better than others. Try playing a Bm7b5 arpeggio over a G7 chord to hear a G9 sound.

Once you understand the basic ideas behind arpeggio substitution, it is then important that you learn which substitutions sound best to your ears and this can only be done by trial and error. To get started with arpeggio substitution, try playing all the arpeggios of the C major scale over a C major 7 chord. The arpeggios found in the C major scale are:

C major 7, Dm7, Em7, Fmaj7, G7, Am7, Bm7b5

I hope you found this brief introduction to arpeggio substitution useful. Try experimenting with arpeggio substitution in your own playing.