When Do You Use Arpeggios?

[White Soul Black Heart]

I don't mean when should they be used, but when and how do you use them to enhance your own music? What kind of sense/feeling are you looking to bring out?

 

I noticed a lot of the music I love uses arpeggios and broken chords, and I tried a very basic one out in one of my recent songs but I'm not sure if it really fits the music.

Edited December 31, 2013 by White Soul Black Heart

[john]

Hey

 

I think they are quite suited to creating a sense of movement. That sense of movement can be very useful for creating emotional tensions. For example, movement can be soothing, like rocking. or it can be frantic, anguished etc. movement allows the composer to more easily convey not only a range of emtions, but also a depth or intensity of emotion. I's not the only mechanism by far, but it is a very useful one.

 

Cheers

 

John

[Just1L]

I had to google it. I agree with John. I think they're best used for a sense of movement. When I'm trying to speed something up, or slow it down. My favorite time to use it is when I'm in full rocking distortion mode with a palm mute. Similar to the beginning of Ain't Talking Bout Love by Van Halen. Although without looking it up I'm not sure that's an actual chord.

[MikeRobinson]

(keyboard / electronic player here ...)

 

Well, you can use arpeggios to "outline" a chord when other competing parts of the arrangement are already busy in the same sonic space, so that you get the effect of the chord without "something that just goes 'plop.'"     It takes up much less space, and it takes more time, all of which can be used to add spice and variety.  (And, mind you, you don't need to pour "a bucket o' reverb" onto the thing to make the chord-perception come through clearly.)

 

It's also fun to have one instrument "comp'ing" some wide-open chords, to some interesting little rhythm, while another instrument is doing arpeggios on a chord that sounds good with it – say, a fifth.  I've even read songs (scores) where one instrument is playing open chords with notes left-out, while another instrument doing arpeggios is hitting those notes, maybe in another register.

 

And, since Santa App-Store dropped a copy of Logic Pro X into my stocking this year, I've also been fooling around a little with arpeggiators, including a mallet-percussion patch which they call Zen Garden.  What this does is to play the notes at-random, while putting delays and lots of reverb in there ... which sounds rather cool.  As a goof-around experiment, I dropped a series of notes on a pentatonic scale (just grab 5 notes from the Circle of Fifths), leaving a "hole in the middle" (or at the bottom or at the top) into which I could maybe put another motif.  (Maybe another group from the Co5, played on percussion but a little less "wet.")  It sounds like there are some interesting, "Kitaro-like" possibilities there.  Stay (de-)tuned.

 

The nice thing about arpeggiators is, of course, that they are automatic.  As long as you don't use them so much that your song screams, "80's Music!" ... or maybe you do, and hey, I grew up with that music and love it to this day ... you can really get a sense of what an arpeggio can do for you.  They can add a lot of variety, especially when the chords in question are four, five, or even six notes wide.  (Go ahead, add them 9ths, 11ths, 13ths into the pot.  Or, add 2nds and other "assonant" intervals that wouldn't be so welcome at the table if everyone was sitting down at exactly the same time.)  The arpeggiator can do random fills, or "strum" sequences, or whatever-you-want.  Great for ideas, even if you subsequently go back and draw the sequences in on a score or piano-roll.

 

I've used arpeggios and runs on several songs, including (on MacJams) Ditty, Trading Places.  And now, "after a suitable interval, a third" ... ... one that will be called Saint Marten Boogie.  (a.k.a.:  "A marimba, a xylophone, and an electric piano basically go nuts for three minutes ...")

Edited January 17, 2014 by MikeRobinson

[White Soul Black Heart]

Thanks a lot again guys, great stuff! And I really dig the examples too : )

[Glenn Allen]

I will sometimes use arpeggios on a verse if the chorus has the same chords and I need a different feel to avoid making the song monotonous.  It is also a cool thing to do during a breakdown or bridge, especially on songs with barre chord choruses.

 

Sometimes my second guitar or lead parts are based on apreggios.  Muse, Paramour, and Longpigs (about 1 minute in) do this well.

[EJB]

I use arpeggios sometimes, but I use arpeggiation often.

 

[EJB]

I had to google it. I agree with John. I think they're best used for a sense of movement. When I'm trying to speed something up, or slow it down. My favorite time to use it is when I'm in full rocking distortion mode with a palm mute. Similar to the beginning of Ain't Talking Bout Love by Van Halen. Although without looking it up I'm not sure that's an actual chord.

Nope it isn't an actual chord, it is three of them arpeggiated (I think) Amin F G. Amin accending F and G decending  then the notes C B C A

 

Actually I have never played the song I am kinda guessing.

Edited June 11, 2014 by EJB

[lubeck]

I quite like using arpeggios during middle 8, especially if the song has a "fast" tempo. 

 

Definitely a good way of variation for a song.