Three fundamental elements define the structure of all western music—scales, chords, and arpeggios. Chords highlight the most critical notes of a scale and do so by sounding these prominent tonalities in unison. Arpeggios, on the other hand, outline the tonalities present within a chord individually, allowing players to create melodic lines that draw attention to the most critical notes within a composition’s chord changes. Jazz music, in particular, is known for utilizing very complex harmonies. So, sometimes crafting arpeggios can feel a bit daunting for jazz musicians of all instruments and levels.

In this online bass lesson, Grammy Award-winning bassist and ArtistWorks jazz instructor, John Patitucci, introduces us to the arpeggios of some of the chords most commonly found in jazz music. He teaches how to outline these chords and craft their respective arpeggios from the ground up, and also how to read a jazz lead sheet and what the most common chord symbols mean.

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“As jazz musicians, we often work off lead sheets with all these different chord symbols seemingly scattered throughout the page. For those that are new to jazz music, this can often look like Greek,” John explains with a chuckle. “These symbols really look much more complex than they really are though, and, once we learn what they mean, they’re really quite easy to dissect.”

As a bass player, it’s not only critical to understand how to outline arpeggios on the fretboard, but also to be able to analyze chord symbols on the written page and be able to translate them onto your instrument. When we’re analyzing chord symbols and determining the notes that make up each chord’s arpeggio, we call that spelling out the arpeggio.

“We need to know how to spell these chords,” explains John. “We need to know how they’re represented, what their symbols look like, and what it means when we spell the chord out. This is particularly important in jazz because we have so much harmonic diversity.”

To learn more about identifying the arpeggios of chords commonly found in jazz and implementing them into your playing and improvisations, dive into this online bass lesson from John Patitucci:

Arpeggios for Common Chords Found in Jazz with John Patitucci:

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Electric Bass Lesson: Creating Harmonic Chords with Stu Hamm