Broken Chords and Beautiful Melody Combined

Fingerstyle Guitar Lesson

Hey, guys, today I want to show you a useful and practical way to play broken chords on the guitar.

A broken chord is a chord broken into a sequence of notes. If the A minor chord is built on the three notes A – C – E, I can play these three notes in progression (one by one)  and call a broken chord (or arpeggio).

The difference between the broken chord and arpeggio is that the broken chord is played with over-ringing while the arpeggio is without over-ringing.

In this exercise, we will be playing few simple broken chords in A minor, E major, and A7 combined with a beautiful melody on the first string.

It’s a captivating chord progression that reminds me of Paganini’s beautiful arpeggios.

Each chord will be played in its fundamental, 1st, and 2nd inversion, so the same chord will have different shapes. We will also play the chords using a straightforward classical picking pattern so that it is easy for you to focus on the left hand only.

Overall, this is a very creative and beautiful exercise that will improve your fingerstyle technique and music theory, and musicality.

PLEASE learn one chord shape at a time. There is no need to learn the whole thing as quickly as possible, so don’t rush!

Let’s get started.

The Video

Broken Chords on Guitar

One of the fascinating things about broken chords is that they can create beautiful arpeggios on different inversions.

Here’s how it works.

The A minor Chord

The first chord we are going to learn is A minor. The three notes that build this chord are A-C and E.

We are going to play four broken A minor chord. Check the guitar Tab below to learn the four positions.

Each broken chord will start from a different note of the chord, so there will be fundamental, 1st, and 2nd inversion.

The E Major Chord

The second chord you’ll learn is the E major chord in four different shapes. The first two are pretty simple as they come from the same chord.

Remember each chord will be played in its Fundamental, 1st, and 2nd inversion, so memorize one chord at a time.

The A7 Chord

This chord is different than the previous two because it’s a dominant seven chord without the root note (we don’t really consider the Reference Root to be part of the arpeggio as we only use it as a reference).

Therefore there will also be a 3rd inversion, a chord with the 7th on the bass.

Guitar Tab below.