Arpeggio

Uses#

Any instrument may employ arpeggiation, but arpeggios are more commonly used on instruments which serve the role of melodic lead or ornamentation. Arpeggios may be used as an alternative to continuous portamento for instruments which are not able to achieve that, or which have limitations in achieving portamento over multiple notes of a scale, such as keyboards, fretted instruments, and monophonic instruments like the flute. Arpeggios are commonly used in many music genres and are particularly highlighted in genres with significant focus on melody and ornamentation, such as flamenco and neo-classical. Arpeggios are an important part of jazz improvisation. On guitar, sweep-picking is a technique used for rapid arpeggiation, which is most often found in rock music and heavy metal music. Along with scales, arpeggios are a form of basic technical exercise that students use to develop intonation and technique. They can also be used in call and response ear training dictations, either alone or in conjunction with harmony dictations. Some synthesizers contain arpeggiators, which are step sequencers designed to facilitate the playing of arpeggios, as well as non-arpeggiated sequences also. In early video game music, arpeggios were often the only way to play a chord since sound hardware usually had a very limited number of oscillators, or voices. Instead of tying them all up to play one chord, one channel could be used to play an arpeggio, leaving the rest for drums, bass, or sound effects. A prominent example was the music of games and demos on Commodore 64’s SID chip, which only had three oscillators (see also Chiptune). This technique was highly popular amongst European video game music composers for systems in the 1980s like the NES, with many transferring their knowledge from their days of composing with the Commodore 64.

Bell chord#

A bell chord, also known colloquially as “bells”, is a musical arrangement technique in which a composition has separate instruments (or multiples of the same instrument) play single notes of a chord in sequence, sustaining individual notes to form the chord. It is, in effect, an arpeggio played by several instruments sequentially. This is also known as a pyramid or cascade. It is common in barbershop music. The technique originated with jazz big bands and is a staple of trad jazz. A good example can be heard in the introduction to “The Charleston” by The Temperance Seven. “Bohemian Rhapsody” by the rock band Queen contains two occurrences of this “bell effect” in the middle section, as does the solo in “Killer Queen” starting at 1:48.

See also#

• Arpeggiator
• Bass arpeggiation
• Non-harmonic arpeggio
• Ostinato
• Style brisé
• Tremolo

External links#

• “Guitar Arpeggios for Beginners” by Dirk Laukens, jazzguitar.be it:Abbellimento#Arpeggio