The Happy Musician

Today you will learn how to sing a fundamental broken chord called an arpeggio. Let’s begin! Video on this coming soon!

You only need to know these four notes in order to sing the arpeggio. Middle C, E, G, and treble C (the C above middle C) are the notes that make up the C major arpeggio. The tonic (first tone or note) of the arpeggio is middle C. The mediant, or third tone, is E. The dominant is G, and the other C is the tonic as well.

The arpeggio goes by skips instead of steps. The C to the E is a major 3rd, the E to the G is a minor 3rd, and the G to the treble C is a major 4th (if you haven’t seen my post on intervals, you can check that out to help you make sense of the major and minor intervals).

If we look at the music above, we see it is in 4/4 time, and each of the notes is a quarter note. Tap your foot at around 60 bpm (there are free online metronomes to establish your tempo) and try to sing the notes in this order on “la”: Middle C, E, G, treble C, G, E, Middle C (I know that the image shows two treble Cs, but most music teachers won’t want you to sing that extra C. However, be prepared for anything).

Now, if we recall the solfege from an earlier post of mine, we remember that the first tone of a scale or arpeggio is do, the third degree is mi, the fifth is sol (or so), and the first (again, but an octave higher) is do. Try singing the note sequence that I gave you earlier but on solfege.

Thanks for reading, and I will see you guys next week! Bye!

Cover photo by Dome Dussadeechettakul

Post photo by Vocalist