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Welcome to this in depth lesson on arpeggio substitution. I hope that after reading this lesson you will understand all there is to know about arpeggio substitution and start using this great device in your own music. Substituting arpeggios over chords is a great way to add some interest to your solos and make you sound more interesting. You can substitute simple arpeggios shapes over fairly boring chords and create some really interesting and complex sounding harmonies.

The first thing we learn to do with arpeggios is to play the arpeggio over it’s related chord. For example when we learn a Cmajor7 arpeggio our first thought is that it should be played over a Cmaj7 chord. While this is a great way to outline a chord progression if we use this idea too often it quickly becomes boring to listen to. We can use substitutions to make the plain Cmaj7 chord sound like a more complex chord like Cmaj9, Cmaj13 etc.

Lets first look at some of the possibilities available to us and then we shall look at some of the most common arpeggio substitutions in more depth. In our first example we will look at the options available to us by substituting arpeggios from the diatonic scale over a minor seven chord to give you an idea of how arpeggio substitution works.

Over a Dm7 chord the most obvious choice of scale to play over it would be a D Dorian scale or a Dm7 arpeggio. This is fine but if we have to play over this minor seven chord for a long period of time these two musical ideas will start to sound boring and predictable so we need a way of finding which arpeggios we can play over this Dm7 chord to make it sound more interesting.

First we will look at the D Dorian scale and see what arpeggios are hiding within it. The notes of D Dorian scale are D, E, F, G, A, B, C and from it we get the following arpeggios by taking the first, third, fifth and seventh notes.

Dm7 (D F A C)

Em7 (E G B D)

Fmaj7 (F A C E)

G7 (G B D F)

Am7 (A C E G)

Bm7b5 (B D F A)

Cmaj7 (C E G B)

Okay now we have our arpeggios we can play any one of these over a Dm7 chord for a more interesting sound. You may be wondering why we can’t just use the D Dorian scale over the whole thing and the simple answer is that we want to break away from just playing scales and start creating more melodic and interesting solos. If you just play the scale over this chord progression is will start to sound very predictable and will not grab the listener’s attention.

All the substitutions we have look at so far have been Diatonic and all came from the most obvious scale. We can also substitute arpeggios from the Melodic minor and Harmonic minor scales to create a much more exotic and jazzy type of sound. In fact most of the jazz bebop sound is that of arpeggio substitution to create interesting implied harmony.

Common substitutions

We shall now look at some of the most common arpeggio substitutions.

1.) Min7 arpeggio played on the 3rd degree of a major chord

This creates a major9 type sound. For example we could play and Em7 arpeggio over a Cmaj7 chord to create a Cmaj9 sound. This is because the Em7 arpeggio contains the D note which is the major 9 of C.

2.) Min7 arpeggio played on the 6th degree of a major chord

This is another common substitution. If we were to play an Am7 chord over a Cmaj7 we would get a C6 type sound.

3.) Major7 arpeggios played on the b3rd degree of the a minor chord

This substitution is used to create a minor9 type sound. If we are playing over a Cmin7 chord for example, we can build a major7 chord off the b3rd degree which in this case is Eb. So if we play an Ebmaj7 arpeggio over a Cmin chord we get a Cmin9 type sound.

4.) Diminished 7 arpeggio played on the 3rd degree of the dominant chord

This is a great sounding substitution which creates a 7b9 type sound. For example try playing an Edim7 arpeggio over a C7 chord to imply a C7b9 tonality.

Try some of these examples for yourself and see how much more interesting your solos become once you start using arpeggio substitution. Adding these ideas into your own sound is a great way to start developing some jazz and fusion type licks.

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