Think only guitar players and pianists get to play chords?  No way!  Every melodic instrument can play chords/arpeggios, and Christopher breaks down some cool formulas for the most widely used chords in this introductory video.

There are four main types of chords/arpeggios: Major, Minor, Augmented and Diminished.  Do you know how to play them?  Do you know how they're constructed?  Do you know a fun way to practice them so you can add them to your musical arsenal?  Watch this video, and your answer to all these questions will be a resounding YES! 

All songs have a series of chords that repeat to make up different sections of that song.  These are called Chord Progressions.  All instruments can use their arpeggios/chord tones to represent and play through these progressions.  We'll give you some practice chord progressions to work on and, soon, you'll be playing the "chords" to all your favorite songs. 

Now that you know how to build major and minor chords/arpeggios, you can also understand how to build chords in specific keys. A "key" is where you use the scale to create the chords. So, if you know all the notes in a specific scale, you also know (and can play) ALL the chords in that key.

Now that you know a few different ways to play your arpeggios with chord progressions, it's time to improvise and create different types of melodies with these awesome chord shapes. 

Soloing with your scales and not thinking about your chord tones is okay. Soloing with your chord tones and not thinking about your scale is okay. BUT…what if you could do both? What if you could solo with your scale AND outline the chord tones in your solo? 

Musician and educator Chris Moore talks to Practice Warrior Christopher Maloney about how saxophonists practice and utilize arpeggios in their musical adventures.

Violinist Bonnie Brown describes how classical instruments practice arpeggios and how they use them in everyday playing.  

Playing your arpeggios is cool, but how about adding some notes that will make them sound cooler? Well, the funny thing is that these new notes will actually sound awful...until you resolve them.

Master educator Chris Moore talks about how ANY musician can understand, learn and use unfamiliar scales

A Chord Enclosure is a specific way to play an arpeggio.  When playing an arpeggio, you "enclose" each arpeggio note with a note a half-step above and a half-step below. Sound confusing?  Sure, but it's actually pretty straight-forward.  In this intriguing lesson, educator Chris Moore talks about the very cool concept of Chord Enclosures (he also begins the conversation about what brings him joy in practicing!).

Woodwind star Mervyn Johnston discusses three very cool concepts to practicing arpeggios.

We hit five types of Seventh Chords:  Major 7, Dominant 7, Minor 7,  Minor 7 b5 (Half Diminished 7) and Diminished 7!

It's time to REALLY go over your 7th Chords. You'll learn how to switch from one kind of chord or arpeggio to another with ease!

In this video lesson, you'll learn how to create sequences with your 7th chord arpeggios.  They're so much fun.

Most people think of playing arpeggios as a form of outlining a chord.  Of course, this is true. What's also true is that nearly every scale you play has a whole bunch of chords/arpeggios built into it.  When you start thinking of your scale in this way, you start PLAYING your scale in a much different way.

Now that you have a greater understanding of what 7th Chords are, how about adding a few notes to your chords to add color and depth? You'll learn all about them in this final lesson in our Chords/Arpeggios course.