Beyond Straight-bar Major Chords
Learning Arpeggios on the Dobro® by Ivan Rosenberg

I'm happy to say that last month's article completed a year's worth of resonator guitar lessons for me in Mel Bay's Guitar Sessions webzine. I've received plenty of feedback via email and on the resonator guitar discussion boards, and hearing what readers are interested in certainly helps me when it's time to write a new article.

A lot of ground has been covered in the last 12 months; we've gone through a few cycles of beginning with a concept from scratch and taking it to a higher level of difficulty. The February and March 2008 articles were the most difficult, both conceptually and technically.

I'd like to get back to basics with some fundamental concepts about learning the resonator guitar fretboard. We've learned how to find the straight bar chord positions, and now it's time to learn about common chord arpeggios that will greatly enhance your ability to find melody notes on the fly.

I'm going to use the Nashville Numbering System for some of this lesson. If you need to review it, please see my Guitar Sessions article from May 2007.

What is an arpeggio?

"Arpeggio" is just a term for playing the notes of a chord one at a time instead of all at once. When playing a song, knowing the individual member notes of the chord you're on is essential to soloing coherently and melodically. In bluegrass and country music, most important or sustained melody notes belong to the chord that the song is on at any given moment.

For most fretted instruments, finding and learning how to play arpeggios is a time-consuming process. On resonator guitar, we're tuned to an open G major chord, which makes it easy to find straight-bar major chords. The straight-bar chords follow the name of the note on the lowest string. Open (that is, without the bar), the low string is a G note, and all of the open strings together form a G major chord. The low string/2nd fret is an A note, and the entire second fret barred will give you an A major chord, and so on for the entire fretboard.

Because it's easy to find major chords in this way, and therefore easy to find melody notes within those chords, many resonator guitar players fall into the trap of simply going from straight-bar chord to straight-bar chord all the way through a song. But this gets old very quickly, and the most common question I'm asked is how to break this habit.

To navigate the fretboard in more interesting ways, it really helps to learn other chord arpeggios - those which are not along the same fret - and that's what we'll begin to do with this lesson.

How to Learn Arpeggios

Let's begin with a straight bar chord and then learn several conveniently located arpeggios from there. Learning in this way will make it easy to transpose to other keys down the line. We'll go back to our old friend, the Key of C major- and the C chord on the 5th fret will be our home base for this entire lesson. Notice that from the low string to the high string, the 5th fret contains two consecutive C major arpeggios, and the individual notes of the C chords are: C E G C E G. Try playing the notes from the low to high and then from high to low. For picking practice, try alternating thumb and index. When you're done, begin the exercise again but pick the notes alternating index first and then thumb.

We know that the 4-chord in the Key of C is an F chord, which you can find at the 10th fret. Go ahead and strum a C chord on the 5th fret, and then strum an F chord on the 10th fret, just to hear how they relate to each other. You should recognize the sound of this chord change from a 1-chord to a 4-chord, as it's probably the most commonly used chord change in popular music.

Now, play the notes of the 10th fret one at a time from low to high. You will be playing two F major chord arpeggios, and the individual notes are: F A C F A C. Again, try the arpeggios from low to high, and then from high to low, and try both picking patterns described above.

Finding Arpeggios That Are Not at Straight-Bar Chord Positions

Now that you've found the 4-chord at the 10th fret and know the names of the notes and what they sound like, it's time to find those notes closer to our home base at the 5th fret. So, where else can we find F, A, and C notes? First, notice that one of the notes of the F chord (the 4-chord in the Key of C), is a C note; you can find it right at the 5th fret without going anywhere! There are more conveniently located C notes that we'll use later.

For now, we still need F and A notes, and the logical place to look is near notes that are alphabetically close. On the 5th fret, we have G notes on the 4th string and the high string (the "D strings" on a resonator guitar). There is always a 2-fret distance between any G note and any F note (just as there is a 2-fret distance between the straight-bar G chord on the 12th fret and the straight-bar F chord on the 10th fret). Just subtract 2 from the 5th fret, and indeed there are F notes on the 3rd fret of the 4th and 1st strings. We'll also use the C notes that can be found on the 1st fret of the 2nd and 5th strings.

We already know that there are E notes, which are part of the C major chord, on the 2nd and 5th strings (the "B strings" on resonator guitar). The distance from an E note to an F note is always one fret, and a good way to remember that is to remember that you have a straight-bar E major chord at the 9th fret and a straight-bar F chord at the 10th fret. Go up one fret from an E note on the B string's 5th fret, and you find that F notes are at the 6th fret of the 2nd and 5th strings.

Just remember that the intervals E-F and B-C (the places on the keyboard where there are no black keys in between white keys) are regarded as natural half tones that translate as one fret on the guitar; all other natural-note intervals (A-B, C-D, D-E, F-G, and G-A) are a whole tone or two frets away from each other.

We still need the A note, and we already know that G notes exist at the 5th fret on the 1st and 4th strings. There is always a 2-fret distance between a G note and an A note, and this means that our A notes can be found on the 7th fret of the 1st and 4th strings. There is also an A note on the G string's 2nd fret. I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea. So now that we've found the individual notes of the F chord in places that are within easy reach of our home base at the 5th fret, what are some of the area arpeggios, and how will knowing them be helpful?

Arpeggios and Chord Inversions

Try out the following tab. Each arpeggio begins on a given note and ends on the same note an octave higher. Each measure has you outlining the notes of an F chord (which we just found) in a few convenient inversions - and you can of course come up with your own combinations of these notes. An inversion simply means that a note other than the root of the chord is on the bottom; in this case, the first chord arpeggio begins and ends on an F note. That is the root or tonic position. The first inversion begins and ends on an A note, and the second inversion of the F chord would have a C on the bottom.

Each of the next three patterns creates a shape that you can remember in a way similar to the way that we identify constellations among the stars.

Chord Progression/Arpeggio Practice in the Key of C

For the most part, the following tab has you playing just the individual notes of whichever chord is being played at a given time. There are a few licks as well that will help you get from chord to chord coherently. As you play the next few staves of tablature, notice how the melody suggests the chords so much that you'll feel as if the chord is changing even without accompaniment.

The Same Exercise with Each Note Doubled

Here is an identical exercise, except that each arpeggio note is played twice. Play through it alternating thumb-index all the way. It might be tough, but if you're used to playing everything with the same finger or with your thumb only, learning to alternate will improve your technique immensely.

I'm going to continue with this concept in May by demonstrating how to improvise using these arpeggiated chord inversions as your roadmap. It'll be fun! Meanwhile, be sure to practice spotting the arpeggios and picking them with gusto.

Until next month,
Ivan Rosenberg

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About the Author

Ivan Rosenberg Ivan Rosenberg is widely considered to be one of the most creative performers of original resonator guitar and clawhammer banjo music. With four solo CDs to his credit, he has also done collaborative recordings with the likes of Billy Cardine, Chris Stuart, and The Breakmen. Combining elements of bluegrass, old time, and Americana music, Ivan's original songs have appeared in over 100 television and film scores including HBO's Making Deadwood, Comedy Central's The Daily Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and Warner Brothers' smash hit movie Kangaroo Jack.

In addition to his regular bands, The Breakmen and Mighty Squirrel, Ivan has recently performed with IBMA winner Chris Jones as well as slide masters Steve Dawson and Doug Cox. A duet project with clawhammer banjo whiz Chris Coole is also in the works.

Ivan writes the monthly resonator guitar column for Mel Bay's Guitar Sessions and has released an instructional DVD. He has led resonator guitar seminars at the California Bluegrass Association Music Camp, the British Columbia Bluegrass Workshop, the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop, and the Sore Fingers Bluegrass Workshop among others.