HearmonyWhat Is an Arpeggio? Meaning, Patterns and How It Trains Your Ear
An arpeggio is a chord played one note at a time instead of all at once. Play C, E, G and the next C in a row and you have a C major arpeggio. The word comes from the Italian arpeggiare, "to play like a harp", because a harpist naturally plucks chords string by string.
Below you will find how arpeggios are written, how they differ from broken chords and scales, the patterns to learn first, well-known pieces built on them and why playing chords as arpeggios is one of the best ways to train your ear.
What is an arpeggio in music?
An arpeggio in music is the notes of a chord sounded in order, usually from low to high or high to low, so you hear the chord as a short melody. The notes are the same as in the block chord; only the timing changes.
Most arpeggios outline a triad (root, third, fifth) or a seventh chord, and many repeat the root on top to round off the octave:
- C major: C E G C
- A minor: A C E A
- G7: G B D F G
If those chord names are new, the guide to triads shows how every three-note chord is built. The Wikipedia article on arpeggios covers the term's history on harp, keyboard and guitar.
How are arpeggios written in sheet music?
Arpeggios are written in two ways: spelled out note by note, or as a chord with a wavy vertical line in front of it. The written-out version is the most common; you simply see the chord tones in a row, often in quick eighth or sixteenth notes.
The wavy line marks a rolled chord. You still read a stacked chord, but you play its notes quickly from the bottom up, letting each one ring, instead of striking them together. Guitar and harp music use it often, and piano music uses it for chords too wide for one hand to grab at once.
Arpeggio vs broken chord vs scale
An arpeggio plays chord tones in order, a broken chord plays chord tones in any pattern, and a scale plays every step of the key. All three can be fast runs of single notes, so they are easy to confuse on the page and by ear.
| Which notes | Order | Example in C | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arpeggio | chord tones only | straight up or down | C E G C |
| Broken chord | chord tones only | any pattern, often repeated | C G E G (Alberti bass) |
| Scale | every note of the key | step by step | C D E F G A B C |
Many teachers use "arpeggio" and "broken chord" loosely for the same thing, and exam syllabi often list them separately. The Alberti bass in the table, low–high–middle–high, is the left-hand pattern that opens Mozart's Piano Sonata in C major, K. 545. A scale sounds like a smooth run; an arpeggio sounds like a run with gaps, skipping the notes in between.
Arpeggio patterns to learn first
The first arpeggios to learn are the major and minor triads in the keys you already play, one octave up and down. On piano, the standard one-octave fingering for a white-key triad such as C major is 1–2–3–5 in the right hand and 5–4–2–1 in the left (thumb = 1).
| Arpeggio | Notes, one octave | Chord type |
|---|---|---|
| C major | C E G C | major |
| G major | G B D G | major |
| F major | F A C F | major |
| A minor | A C E A | minor |
| D minor | D F A D | minor |
| E minor | E G B E | minor |
| G7 | G B D F G | dominant 7th |
| B diminished | B D F B | diminished |
Once these feel easy, start the same arpeggio from the third or fifth instead of the root: E G C E, then G C E G. Those are the inversions of C major played one note at a time; how they look and sound as block chords is covered in chord inversions explained.
Famous pieces built on arpeggios
Some of the best-known pieces in the piano repertoire are almost entirely arpeggios, and all of the following are in the public domain.
- Bach, Prelude in C major (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1). Every bar is one chord spelled out in the same broken pattern; the first bar plays C, E, G, C, E, G, C, E twice.
- Beethoven, "Moonlight" Sonata, first movement. Slow triplet arpeggios run under the whole movement, starting with G♯, C♯, E, the notes of C♯ minor.
- Mozart, Piano Sonata in C major, K. 545. The right hand sings the melody while the left hand keeps up a broken-chord Alberti bass.
Melodies outline arpeggios too. "Taps", the bugle call, uses only the notes of one major chord (sol, do, mi and high sol), because a bugle has no valves to play anything else. "The Star-Spangled Banner" opens by tracing a major chord down and back up: sol, mi, do, mi, sol, high do.
How arpeggios train your ear
Arpeggios train your ear by letting you hear each chord tone on its own before you hear the chord as a block. When a chord is spread out, you can catch the third (which decides major or minor) and the fifth (which decides stable or not) instead of guessing from one blended sound.
- Arpeggiate, then strike. Play the chord note by note, then all together. Over a few weeks, the block chord starts to sound like the notes you heard one by one.
- Listen to the step sizes. From the root, a small step then a large one (3 + 4 semitones) is minor; large then small (4 + 3) is major. Two equal small steps are diminished, two equal large steps augmented.
- Name the top note. After a C major arpeggio, ask whether the last note is the root, third or fifth. This is the first step toward hearing which note of a chord a melody lands on.
- Play arpeggios back. Have a friend or an app play a three-note arpeggio, then find it on your instrument. This is playing by ear in its simplest form.
Hearing chords spread out and then together is also the standard tip for telling chord types apart; the full method is in types of chords and how each one sounds.
Common mistakes and how to fix them
- Uneven notes. A thumb crossing or a string change makes one note louder or late. Fix: practice slowly with a metronome until every note is even.
- Treating it as a finger exercise only. Fix: before playing, say the chord name and its quality, and listen for that color while you play.
- Only going up. Fix: practice every arpeggio up and down; descending arpeggios are common in melodies and harder to hear.
Self-test: which of these are arpeggios of a single chord? C E G C · C D E F · F A C F · A C E G · C G E G. Answers: C E G C (C major), F A C F (F major) and A C E G (Am7) are arpeggios; C D E F is part of a scale; C G E G is a broken chord.
Practice arpeggios in Hearmony
Hearmony plays chords as arpeggios in the early lessons of its Chord Garden adventure: each chord sounds note by note, then together, so you learn to hear major, minor, diminished and augmented from their thirds before you hear them as blocks. Melody Meadow trains the other direction: Fen plays a short tune and you play it back on an on-screen piano keyboard, building up to full scale melodies from do to high do. The Note Memory Mountain adventure adds echo questions on do, mi, sol and high do, the notes of the major arpeggio.
Hearmony doesn't teach instrument technique such as fingering; it trains the listening side. The first adventure and the side quests are free, and Chord Garden and Melody Meadow are part of Hearmony Pro. For a full routine, start with ear training exercises for beginners.