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Arpeggios: let's sort the whole thing out
Casual visitors here may be thinking, 'That's odd - I didn't know there was anything to sort out about arpeggios...' (or indeed 'What the hell's an arpeggio?'). Regulars will be immediately putting their head in their hands and thinking, 'Oh, bloody hell, not this again...'
The essential background is that somewhere or other, in the middle of colossal recent threads on either or both (I forget) Andy Kershaw and the existence or otherwise of cliques on the Word forum, a surely unforeseeable deviation into arguing the toss about what constituted an arpeggio erupted - with seemingly no-one able to stop it.
Internet academics around the world were convulsed with fascination: the equivalent of cosmologists witnessing the birth of a star or the collapse of a black hole was happening before their very eyes. A new companion to Godwin's Law (wherein, after 100 posts on any web forum where the topic is that forum itself and its membership, comparisons to Nazis will inevitably occur) was being formed.
That new inevitability, which we shall name Heppo's Law - until the international committee which oversees such things decides on an official moniker - declares that within any forum whose demographic is broadly weighted towards 40-something individuals with an unusually high density of occupations and experience within the media and an unusually high interest in progressive rock, after 100 posts on a thread about itself an implosion towards heated and futile debates about arcane musical terminologies will occur.
However...
This thread isn't about that. (Although I admit that, if it reaches 100+ posts I'll be curious to see if it reverse-implodes into a heated debate about Andy Kershaw).
It's simply this: never mind defining arpeggios, let's celebrate them. Along with 'the 40 noises that built rock & roll', I believe the arpeggio should not be underrated or excluded.
Much of the Beatles' late-period work was built on very obvious arpeggios - 'I Want You' and 'Here Comes The Sun' being two great examples. If anyone here doesn't quite know what an arpeggio is, listen to those two tracks and the guitar patterns shared between them and you'll know. Hopefully you'll instinctively know an arpeggio or its near relations the quasi-arpeggio, the more-or-less arpeggio and the broken chord when you hear it after that. (Alternatively, listen to almost any organ work by JS Bach!)
This thread might die a death very quickly, or it might not. If it doesn't - if it proves of interest to lots of Word people - I'd like to invite David Hepworth and Mark Ellen to name their faves (like a best/worst arpeggio section in the magazine). Like the best/worst section, it's just a bit of fun and the criteria is 'because we say so'!
In the meantime, we might all find some interesting music!
I'll post two of my faves to start with: 'Badge' by Cream (the bridge between the A and B sections of the song being Arpeggio Central, from 1:48 onwards) and 'You Know, You Know' by the Mahavishnu Orchestra (whose work is littered with fiendish arpeggios). Purists may question whether this particular track is built on strictly defined arpeggios, but they 'feel' like arpeggios - a three-arpeggio-esque sequence repeated X times and then a five arpeggio-esque sequence acting as the B section/resolution.
So those are the rules: if it 'feels' like an arpeggio sequence, it's in!
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Sorry, not having it
None of those are arpeggios....or are they? I wait to be told.
It doesn't matter
For the purposes of this post, and to protect my rapidly-dwindling sanity, if something feels like an arpeggio to the person choosing the music, then it's an arpeggio.
I'm with Fraze on this!
...if someone specifically asks 'is this or that an arpeggio?' (as below, re: REM) then I'll be happy to give an opinion - and I'm sure others will too - but they'll only be opinions! I don't have a B Mus or a Grade 8 in Fugue Composition!
Remember: it's only a bit of fun!
arpeggio or no...
...what the bloody hell is Clapton doing to the vocal melody on the verses?
I'll tell what he's doing: he's ruining it by not actually singing it. or rather, he's singing a melody tangentially similar to the original, whilst not being any good at all. It's not as if he can't hit the notes. Does he think he's improving it?
That's my favourite Cream song, and if I'd paid the no-doubt-huge entry fee to that gig I would have been livid.
Livid, I tell you.
John McLaughlin
Think he really was from Yorkshire wasn't he? Good to see he hasn't go a check shirt on.
By some strange coincidence I was listening to the studio version of this track on my IPOD on wednesday and had it turned up quite loud in the car. It has a quiet build up and I forgot where the volume jumps in dramatically and nearly jumped out of my bloody seat.
As I have said before I am not technically minded but think I now know what an Arpeggio is - another good example of McLaughlins Arpeggios are on the In a Silent way album.
Indeed so, Steve..
...though unlike Andy K's 'professional Northerner' schtick, John M's accent seems to have inhabited somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic for the past 40 years.
But I'd say you have definitely entered the zone of instinctual arpeggio recognition!
It was good seeing the Youtube clip
I completely forgot about the Blue violin. I saw them at Birmingham Town Hall around that time. I recall them standing with their backs to the audience while we all meditated for a couple of minutes.
It was your posts on here that encouraged me to get their first 2 albums again on cd. Had them on vinyl. I forgot how good the albums were and they haven't dated at all.
Now that was a real super group.
You're very kind, Steve...
...and I'm certainly envious of your Birmingham experience!
If you're not aware of the 40-odd 1972-73 concerts seemingly legitimately available on wolfgangsvault.com, mostly sourced and mastered from excellent recordings kept by their far-sighted soundman Dinky Dawson, I'd recommend a visit. I've downloaded every one of them. Oceans of bliss, oceans of bliss! (and a fair few arpeggios, I can tell you)
Oh, bloody hell, not this again
*sit's down and awaits the start of the lecture from Marky*
Every budding guitar player starts here
with this series of dead easy arpeggios
REM
Does the intro to Find The River and the whole of Everybody Hurts count?
Arpeggio vs Arpeggiator
That's the real question.
An arpeggiator is much more fun.
Definitely
I had to sell it, but I had a Novation Nova a while back,and the arpeggiator on that was superb, great loads of riffs and basslines and drum lines. And it transmitted the whole thing over midi, rather than just the keys you held down, so you could drop them into a sequencer track, and edit them. Really nice.
The Arpeggiator
I'll be Bach
Well...
...I've just checked them out and, IMHO, Find The River's intro is just a bit of chordal picking, but Everybody Hurts is undoubtedly built on arpeggios.
Intriguingly, I'd say - in similar fashion to the MO's 'You Know, You Know' - REM's 'Orange Crush *feels* like its built on arpeggios, but I don't think a purist (and we know they're out there!) would agree. Imagine, if you can, JS Bach taking Orange Crush and adapting it for organ and I think you'll see what I mean.
Looking forward to seeing if Mr Ellen, especially, has any views on arpeggios. Did Ugly Rumours, for example, ever play a version of Blue Oyster Cult's 'Don't Fear The Reaper'....? I think we should be told!
Hooray!
Vangelis...
...brilliant!
Ahem
It's Heppy, not Heppo, as any fule kno.
Sorry, but no
It's always been Heppo since this splendid thread
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/popular-culture-and-quotoquot-suff...
Heppy appears to have been invented by Doug B in a post saying you shouldn't invent nicknames for people. I am sure the Hepperillo is fine with it.
Lowe and behold
I think Richard Lowe 'invented' it in an earlier comment on the clique thread, but this is just getting way too self-referential and may explode at any time, so let's just leave it eh...? ;)
Agree
Completely :-)
Heppopotamus
I give you
The Hep Cat
Uncannily, Twang...
...the Hep Cat's alter-ego in the mirror at 1:18 bears more than a passing resemblance to.... Mark Ellen!
Sweet child of mine intro
Call it a broken chord, call it a pattern, its basically a succession of arpeggios, all be it with the notes "not necessarily in the right order"
Did you know
that it came about as he was playing it as a guitar exercise, just warming up and one of the others said to Slash, 'what's that?' and it became one of the most recognised riffs of all time.
Sounds very likely
And simplest is best. I'll have to try it with the uke later!
Simple
Au contraire. That riff is bleedin' hard to play. Well, it is for me anyway.
Right!
You're bloody well right.
Gah.
I spent most of my teenage years trying to play that lick fluently, and then most of my twenties trying to nail that bloody scale after the wah wah kicks in.
I can do the lick (which, for my money, isn't strictly an arpeggio). I can't do the scale. Slash is fucking good.
Agree
Anyone heard any of his solo stuff - Snakepit etc? He'd be great without Axl squawking away. He guests on one of my Paul Rogers albums I think. I've never bother to learn that riff - must give it a go.
It's just string-skipping...
...based around a D5 shape, starting on the 12th fret on the D-string. Once you've got your fingers in the right place, there's no real movement. It's all in the same position.
Aahh.. Memories.
My first flat had behind it the Old Portsmouth YMCA, which functioned as a student hall of residence. One summer afternoon back in about 1997 someone over there was, at high volume, with all the windows open and with a startling degree of ineptitude, trying to learn the intro to SCOM. With a guitar so badly out of tune it was criminal. I'd recently, after much trying and sore fingers, managed to get the same intro nailed pretty much off pat. I stuck my amp outside my door, wound everything up to ten and ripped out the riff. Twice.
It all went quiet after that.
I don't think I've played any G'n'R since.
Love In Vain
Rolling Stones version from Stripped. Especially the way Keef tries and fails to utter the word "arpeggio" at the beginning.
I especially like the beginning riff to the Temptations' My Girl but I wait to be put in my place and be told that it's a major pentatonic scale rather than an arpeggio
I actually think
that Andy Kershaw's joke (and it was a joke) was a good one. Bear in mind the vast majority of the audience are not familiar with the exact technicalities, to describe metal guitar as a single arpeggio removed from punk is quite witty. To most of us, the term 'arpeggio' sounds as though it refers to a frilly, fancy flourish in a piece of music. It turns out, if I understand correctly, it could consist of three random notes. I'd probably agree that metal is slightly frillier than punk.
(I do hope I haven't said anything wrong or upset anyone of a purist disposition.)
My Girl
sounds more like a riff to me (though as you say, Richard) based on a major pentatonic scale.
Let us not forget...
...that among the ophicleides, sax-horns and suchlike detritus which litter the history of orchestral music like a dead end on a roadmap, is the mighty Arpeggione: briefly popular circa 1800-1810 (that's from memory - no doubt someone can check on wikipedia if it's really of interest) and now remembered SOLELY for Schubert's still-popular 'Arpeggione Sonata'...which is now played almost exclusively on cello.
There's a brief clip of someone playing Schubert's piece on a bona fide arpeggione (basically a guitar/cello hybrid) on youtube, but this clip - of a newly written piece for the instrument - is much more fun because not only does the music not include, to my ears, any arpeggios but it doesn't appear to include any sequences of notes with potential for engaging the listener whatsoever. And the composer's name is a veritable barn door awaiting an appropriate pun...
I thought an arpeggio
was something you rode around Naples in a cloud of two-stroke fumes, with a Nazionali clenched between your teeth, and a leggy brunette clinging to your back for dear life.
I always thought
it was a cluster of small islands.
I don't Know
what they are but I instinctively know that ABBA loved them.
Bustles... hedgerows... may queens...
Gosh, good suggestion Crowthmeriser...
...it's almost so familiar that one wouldn't think of it but, yes, it feels as if those arpeggios are there indeed, peeking mischievously out from behind the hedgerows and toadstools and what-not. We feel their presence but can't quite convince the music tutor they're really there. It makes me wonder...
The Motherlode...
I think it's time we heard a Bach arpeggio.
If you get a chance to hear a full organ version of the Passacaglia in C minor (from whence derives this wibbly keyboard excerpt - very clearly demonstrating arpeggios in a way that not even Marky to take issue with) you'll probably think 'Crikey, that's the doom-mongering ancestor of all metal!' Baroque'n'roll.
While I do indeed
pity poor old Fraser above---who must know *exactly* why they call the middle bit of a nuclear reactor the moderator---I intend to understand this stuff sooner or later. I really would quite like to understand a bit of the technicalities of music-probably will get a keyboard app for an iPad or similar.
So in the meantime-is an arpeggio related to what Bach is doing here ?
[ViolinPartita No 3] and how does he get that "glow" off the music at 0.40 onwards, sound of sunlight on falling waterfall and all the other descriptive cliches ...
But as I said in another thread-surely the Arpeggio is the one with the square steering wheel and the hydragas suspenion ???
A full organ vesion like this one perhaps
[Richter]
well, perhaps not the Richter version...
...he goes for the 'melancholic' feel with the choice of understated, flutey stops, whereas THIS guy, pulls out all the stops. I think here you can hear the roots of modern metal. And he's from Finland...
Some serious patent leather action afoot there
Now for some pluckin' good harpsichord action.
I love a bit of Bach, me, so this thread has really got me buzzing.
This, Bach's Prelude in C, is basically a series of arpeggios from start to finish.
And even more interpretations of the work, some on guitar, at
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5B903DE3C8A3144A
Definitely an arpeggio merchant
Love that one as well-as the FPO has observed to me it's the missing link to Glass.
Freeman Dyson named one of the chapters of "Disturbing the Universe" Prelude in C, and writes about the family's amusement when, on being asked about music, said "I like music, but it goes on too long".
Arpeggio
In (very) simple terms an arpeggio is the playing all the notes in a chord one after the other rather than hitting them all in one go as in on a piano, or strumming a chord on a guitar.
I prepare to be corrected.
If you were sitting a music exam...
....you would be asked to play scales and arpeggios. A major scale would be...doh ray me fah so etc. In that scale, notes 1 3 and 5 make up the major chord. You would be asked to play(eg) the arpeggio to two octaves rising(or falling) which would be notes 1 3 and 5 and the same again in the next octave.
If the singer asks the guitarist to play arpeggio style, then rather than just bash out the chords, he'll play each string individually on each chord.....eg REM "Everybody Hurts".
I hope that makes some sort of sense...it'd difficult to put down in words but actually very simple.
that's it
an arpeggio in its purest form is just the notes Doh, Me, Soh and Hi-Doh
Hit a piano key, any key, or pluck a string. Now move up 4 notes or frets and hit/pluck. Now move up another 3 hit/pluck. Finally go up another 5.
12 notes from the bottom of a scale to the top.
Course, you could get into inversions and all that McGubbins, but that's no fun
Probably the most famous one of all
...major chord arpeggios are used in the main melody (head) of this tune(from about 0.26 - 1.00) which everyone here will be familiar with.
For those without youtube, it's Glenn Miller's "In The Mood".
Brilliant example Steve!
and major chord arpeggios too - truly, Glenn Miller was the Anti-Bach!
Beezer - you're on the right track, but others more schooled than I will be able to explain why what you're saying isn't quite right. But a helpful example might be to listen to two consecutive Ralph McTell singles from the 70s (no, really): 'Streets Of London' is picked chords, but not arpeggio based; 'Dreams Of You', its follow-up, is picked chords and IS arpeggio based (actually it's based on Bach's 'Jesu Joy...' which explains the 1-2-3, 1-2-3 magical rigour of the cycle of notes).
In the meantime, here's another Mahavishnu example - this one written by violinist Jerry Goodman from their 'Lost Trident Sessions' (1973) posthumous album. It is, as you'll hear, doffing its cap Bach-wards:
"One arpeggio away from..." what?
Have some of this!
It's Arpeggio City au-go-go as Bob Dylan spoofs Norwegian Wood with 4th Time Around from Blonde On Blonde
can i just piss on yr chips?
by saying (to paraphrase said arpeggiated pistols classick)
"i don't care"
Brand X..
immediately thought of this one, arpeggios and phasing too!
http://youtu.be/96HTBNl3wd4
Here's one. Appropriate lyric in the circumstances
Mike Oldfield..
don't you think?
http://youtu.be/Z9NDEivtg1I
Look ...
When are you folks going going to understand that I'm always right, and you are always wrong?
Full marks to
• Beezer for correctly stating that "In (very) simple terms an arpeggio is the playing all the notes in a chord one after the other rather than hitting them all in one go." Yup!
• Bigsteviecook ."you would be asked to play scales and arpeggios. A major scale would be...doh ray me fah so etc. In that scale, notes 1 3 and 5 make up the major chord. You would be asked to play(eg) the arpeggio to two octaves rising(or falling) which would be notes 1 3 and 5 and the same again in the next octave." Yup!
• Mojo - for correctly choosing more or less the only sample here, House Of The Rising Sun the guitar backing, that is a straight arpeggio. All of the others including Stairway to Heaven guitar part, the Guns & Roses intro, and the descending bit in Badge by Cream, also have passing notes. So they are melodies backed up with arpeggiated notes. Not just straight arpeggios.
10 out of 10 to all three of you.
Now who can I choose to pick a fight with? (because this thread wouldn't be any fun otherwise) "Picked chords" on a guitar and "arpeggios" are in musical theory terms, exactly the same thing. As Beezer correctly said. If its a chord, it can be played as an arpeggio. So words fail me as to what Colin H is carping on about. Sheesh!
Picking fights
I'd really rather you didn't. Please remind yourself of the posting guidelines.
Thank you.
Aww, spoil sport
We really do need that "sarcastica" font don't we. I'm only havin' a laugh
Posting Guidelines,
I see that the very first guideline on the list is regularly and routinely ignored by most of the regular posters.
So, does that mean the clique are exempt from following the guidelines? I think we should be told ;-)
I am joking, sort of. But sometimes the OTT swearing does get a little blokey, doesn't it?
Exactly.
How about a new thread - "Navel Fluff, the dilemma - to remove or not to remove?"
Although I have to admit that sadly on this subject there is not much to argue about, because everyone now seems to know what an arpeggio is. Damn and blast.
Ha
The first guideline is regularly ignored by all sorts of posters, regular or otherwise.
To be honest, Fraser
I love this site for its fights. I find it wonderfully entertaining when people start bickering and threatening to take their bat & ball home.
In the end, it's all very civilised, people apologise (sometimes too profusely for my liking), everyone's sense of humour prevails and nobody gets seriously injured.
I also acknowledge, that from time to time a moderator has to step in to stop things getting out of hand.
Keep it up everybody!!
You may be only 'avin a larf
On the whole, I'm drawn to the Word Blog for well mannered, intelligent, informed, inclusive and above all polite discussion. If we all spent our time picking fights for our own amusement whether we were just 'havin' a laugh' or not this forum would soon descend into nothing but the tedious bickering that has dominated certain threads of late.
If picking fights is your thing, you might like to go on to Youtube and choose a video, perhaps of someone claiming to play an arpeggio and scroll down to the comments section where you will find a vast Bear Pit of vitriol, bile and verbal abuse to wade through and a limitless supply of ignorant fuckwits to pick fights with. Failing that try the comments page of any online Tabloid newspaper.
hmm lovely this place innit
"Ignorant fuckwits", "bear pit vitroil" ,"verbal abuse."
Basic life lessons: Always interesting to see how those most liable to be critical of a certain perceived characteristic in others, are nearly always the most likely to exhibit that same characteristic themselves. Given any opportunity whatsoever. Get a sense of humour mate, be a good start.
Gentlemen
Please address the point without abusing the poster.
Thank you.
Apologies to all
but I wasn't abusing Marky, I was describing the type of person and the standard of debate he may find on Youtube or Tabloid comments pages, where 'picking fights' is the order of the day, unlike here. I wasn't suggesting he was one of them. In hindsight I suppose the definition of Arpeggio is not a hot topic on The Daily Mail pages.
"definition of Arpeggio is not a hot topic on The Daily Mail.."
...well, I know at least one poster here who spends equal time on The Word blog and the Daily Mail's women's pages (aka The Most Frightening Place Known To Man), but who has thus far remained untarnished...
However, if you wanted to organise a Word-blog field trip (or, indeed, a 'clique'!) to go over there to the Daily Mail site and start a fevered discussion on arpeggios, it might be an interesting social-networking experiment.
What would we title our thread, though?
"Arpeggio prices set to soar!"
Save our British Pop Arpeggios: EU set to stamp out treasured regional variations on Classical three note sequences!"
"Cowboy builders wrecked Our Arpeggio" say hard-working Word couple"
"Evil Bankers buy up stocks in Arpeggios"
"Arpeggio immigration: turn them back at Dover"
You forgot the 'What *Is* An Arpeggio then?' junket scandal
"BBC Arts executives sent on £1000-a-night fact-finding trip to Juilliard School of Music in New York in outrageous waste of license-payers' money" ;-p.
Fantastic!
...and verily would the steam pour forth yet more vigorously from their ears when the Daily Mail readers were made aware that not only had Yentob and the boys spent tens of thousands of licence-payers' cash in their futile Juilliard trip (only to find that Marky was off on leave for the week and no one else was prepared to comment in his absence lest the man himself, immortalised in a Werner Herzog documentary as 'Arpeggio: Wrath Of God', bring down cadenzas of fury and codas of unresolved chords upon their houses) but that the whole thing could have been sorted out on their very doorstep...
Yes, IF ONLY anyone had thought to phone up Twangathon at Arpeggio Consulting they could have had The Truth for the price of a decent cappucno, a new set of strings for the Les Paul and a renewed subscription to The Word...
descending triads with arpeggiated passing notes...
...THAT'S where it at! Surely even Marky could agree on that? :-D
Actually, in all seriousness I'd like to hear what you can tell us, Marky, about Bach's building blocks for the Patrita Spaceboy posted above. I'm more familiar with it from recordings of lute transcriptions (also amazing), but have absolutely no idea "how he does it" as a writer. I can only say that it's music beyond any of us, but which is accessible to all of us. Good trick to pull off!
Meanwhile, here's the Beatles, with a cyclical triad of arpeggiated suspense-generating notes and a brief lyric:
Apropos of nothing
My company is called Arpeggio Consulting...
So,
If I wanted to consult an Arpeggio, I'd call you?
Certainly
Any time old bean.
?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!
...NOW he tells us! :-)
I don't know if this is an arpeggio...
...but it sounds like one to me, thus fulfilling the criteria of the thread:
In My Room by the Beach Boys
Deliciously rich but clean guitar notes, glockenspiel accent, a harp flourish and there begins the first Smiths song ever written.
http://youtu.be/Usuu-xu75dI
In a recent issue
of a rival publication, our old friend Pete Paphides employs the line "(the) arpeggiating soft rock of I Believe" in his review of the new CD by The Zombies.
Do session musicians who play arpeggios
get paid 'scale'?
No, they get paid in used notes...
...usually three of them...
Superb
Comeback !
I did wonder whether
that would only be if they were working for the Triads?
or the
MINIMum wage