Intro to Arpeggio

At the 10th Annual Holiday Party of the Ukulele Union of Boston, we sang a playful parody of The Twelve Days of Christmas. Molly and Dan Watt cleverly chose the phrase “five arpeggios” for the fifth day—a perfect musical twist! Inspired by that, and still in an arpeggio mood, I couldn’t resist writing a short piece for Pick Pluck Play! But first, let’s answer the question: what exactly is an arpeggio?

What is an arpeggio?

The word arpeggio comes from Italian and literally means “harp-like”—to play as you would on a harp.

I first learned the concept at the piano: instead of pressing all the notes of a chord at once, you spread them out and play them one by one. That simple idea—turning a solid chord into a flowing sequence—creates movement and texture.

In its simplest form, an arpeggio is a broken chord, but there’s flexibility in how you “break” it. Do you play the notes in order from low to high? High to low? Or mix them up in any pattern?

A piece for Pick Pluck Play!

To introduce arpeggios, I wrote a short (one-page) piece after arranging Greensleeves (What Child Is This) with arpeggios. Notice the individual notes are successively ordered in one direction and there’s a lot of repetition.

Use only two fingers on each hand to press and play. Follow the left hand fingering as indicated. Use the right thumb and index finger only except for the final chord (down strum).

Five Arpeggios

The 12 Days of Ukulele Christmas
Parody by Dan & Molly Lynn Watt and the Improbable String Band
Arrangement adapted from Jim’s Ukulele Songbook

It was a lot of fun to sing this song, thanks to Dan and Molly.

Gift of Music

I would love to give my new “Intro to Arpeggio” to everyone who bought Book 1 or Book 2 of Pick Pluck Play! as a bridge to Book 3 which contains several arpeggio pieces.

Amazon doesn’t tell me who has bought my books. I only know that the biggest marketplace is the USA. The second biggest is the United Kingdom.

If someone tells me he or she has bought my book, I usually reply with “Thank you. Would you write a review?”

Otherwise I do not know who has bought my books.

Who will premiere this new piece? There are only 16 measures, all on one sheet of paper.