What an arpeggio is
An arpeggio is a broken chord — the notes of a chord played one at a time instead of together. The word is Italian, from arpeggiare, "to play like a harp."
Step or skip — the two ways a melody moves
- A scale moves by step — neighbour to neighbour.
- An arpeggio moves by skip — jumping through the notes of a chord (^1, ^3, ^5, ^8).
Every tune you know is some mix of the two. Practise both and you've drilled the two motions music is made of.
It outlines the harmony
Because an arpeggio is a chord, playing one tells the listener the harmony without any accompaniment. A solo violin line that arpeggiates G–B–D has stated "G major" all by itself. That's exactly what happens at the start of the Mozart concerto this course points toward — which you'll decode later this stage.
Try it
Try
Play the G major arpeggio slowly: open G, then B (high 2 on the G string), then open D, then G (3rd finger on the D string). Come back down. Notice each move is a skip, and notice your bow has to cross from the G string to the D string cleanly in the middle. Arpeggios drill string crossing as much as they drill the notes.
The usual mistake
Playing an arpeggio as if the skips were hard and scary. They're not — they're just a chord you already know, played in a line. If you can roll a G major chord, you can play a G major arpeggio; it's the same three notes with time between them.