Arpeggio inversion voice leading

The point of using inversions is to improve the voice leading of your arpeggios.  Voice leading refers to how each individual note of an arpeggio leads to the next arpeggio.  Generally speaking, you don’t want the individual tones to be jumping around more than they need to.  By inverting the arpeggios the tones stay relatively clustered around the same pitch range.  However you don’t always need to use this.  In some cases you might specifically want your arpeggios to jump around.

Note that this lesson doesn’t cover the actual inversions themselves.  There are many online lessons that have all the inversions of three and five string arpeggios.

As an example of how to create and use arpeggio inversions, let’s use this progression.

i iv III VII

In A minor, this would be A minor, D minor, C major and G major.

A C E

D F A

C E G

G B D

Here we can see that some chords share the same notes.  A minor and D minor share an E.  C major and G major share a G.  We wan to keep these notes in the same place when switching between those chords. 

First, here is the chord progression in simple root position chords.  Notice the large leaps when transitioning from one chord to the next.  Try playing this yourself and listen to how the chords move.

This is the same progression in two octave, five string arpeggio form.  Each arpeggio is in root position, just like the chords are in the above example.  The left hand position shifts make these a little more difficult to play and the sound isn’t as smooth due to the two middle arpeggios being voiced much lower.

Moving back to the chord progression itself: in order to make this progression sound smoother, I am going to invert the chords by moving the lowest pitched notes of the chords up an octave.

The first note I’m going to move is the D of the second chord.

Now the second chord is a D minor in 1st inversion.

Next I’m going to move the F of the second chord. 

Now it is a D minor in 2nd inversion and the first chord nicely leads to the second. 

Next I’m going to move the C of the third chord.

The third chord is now a C major in 1st inversion.

Finally I’m going to move the E of the third chord. 

Now the third chord is a C major in 2nd inversion.
Now each chord moves nicely to the next without any large leaps.  Try playing the entire progression now.  It should sound much smoother and more logical. 

We are going to apply this same concept now to the arpeggios of these chords.

I’m going to treat the arpeggios a little differently from the way I chose to invert the actual chords.  I am going to use a second inversion A minor, first inversion D minor, first inversion C major and second inversion G major.

Here is the same progression using one octave three string arpeggios.

Here it is using two octave five string arpeggios.

Any time you are having a problem with arpeggio position shifts, or if you want your arpeggios to connect more smoothly, try this technique.

Copyright Dave Cardwell 2007