Now that we have major chords behind us we can talk about minor chords and minor arpeggios. Once again, arpeggios are the individual notes of a chord played one after another. To make a major chord take the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the respective scale and play them together. Minor chords follow the same rule but instead of the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of a major scale, take the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of a minor scale and you will have a minor chord. The difference between a major and minor chord is that the 3rd is flat in a minor chord when compared to the major scale's 3rd degree. Let’s take a look at the fret board and see how a minor arpeggio is played.
This will be a Gm arpeggio. Notice the minor scale isn't played completely but just the 1st, 3rd, and 5th notes of the scale are played to create the arpeggio. A guitar or piano player would play all of these notes at the same time to make the Gm chord. Notes that are on the same string like the B can be played an octave up on the piano or guitar to ensure that all notes are played. Generally the root note is always the lowest. Remember this, along with the major arpeggio pattern, can be moved around the fret board. If you want to play a Cm arpeggio start the pattern on the C note. Now that we know what the minor arpeggio looks like we can make a bass line that is centered around this arpeggio.
Here is an example of a bass line in Gm that is loosely based around the Gm arpeggio. Utilizing the flat 3rd, 6th, and 7th notes of the minor scale will really bring out the 'minor' in your base lines. With this in mind you can use those flatted notes (they are flat when compared to the major scale) to play around the arpeggio, much like measures 3 and 4. Measure three starts out with the flat 7th and after the G, hits the flat 3rd in beat 3. Beat two of measure 4 is a flat 6th and beat three is a flat 3rd. It is important for you to be able to pick out these flat notes so that you can see how a minor scale and arpeggio is used. If the flat notes of a minor scale aren't used it can sound just like a major scale, basically the flat notes make the minor scale the minor scale. With this in mind try playing around with the minor scale and using the minor arpeggio shape as well. If you have some questions you can check out the GLI forums!
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