Sometimes when playing saxophone without a chordal instrument or accompaniment, it can be hard to hear the harmonic context for the melodies being improvised or worked on. One way to help hear harmonically while playing single note lines is to arpeggiate voicings. Arpeggiating a voicing can really bring out the harmony while introducing fresh melodic shapes to your lines. This exercise takes a simple voicing and adjusts it to fit Major, Dominant and Minor 7th chords through all the keys via the circle of fourths. The voicing in C major is C, G, A, B, E… and back down… E, B, A, G, C (1, 5, 13, 7, 3). It can be interesting to break up the arpeggio by improvising with the notes contained within it, this can also help to free the idea and move it away from being a fixed pattern.
~ Enjoy!
Lesson 9 Arpeggiating voicings PDF
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