As mentioned earlier in this course, in fact in lesson one Open String Scales In Five Keys, melodies are primarily made up of two elements; scales & arpeggios. In the first lesson, Ross introduced you to five open string major scales.
In this lesson, Ross now takes these five keys and demonstrates the arpeggios that can be derived from the scales. The open string major arpeggios you will learn in this lesson are: C Major, G Major, D Major, A Major and E Major.
The simple fact is that for every chord that exists we can play a corresponding arpeggio. An arpeggio is basically a broken chord. That is, the notes of a chord and only those notes within the chord played one at a time. Armed with a good selection of arpeggios and then these being interwoven with their respective scales opens up a large amount of melodic possibilities.
A good example would be the children’s song “Three Blind Mice”. If you know this song, listen to it and play it. You will see that the whole song consists of simple scalar movements and leaps. These leaps are arpeggios, or part of which create diversity and interest within the melody. This simple model is repeated again and again across all musical genres and is the template for all songs.
