Minor 7 arpeggios on guitar
Root, ♭3, 5 and ♭7 — the four chord tones for minor grooves and minor-key solos.
- Notes
- A · C · E · G
- Formula
- 1 · ♭3 · 5 · ♭7
- Notes in the scale
- 4
A minor 7 arpeggio is the minor triad with a ♭7 added. Those four notes are the whole chord, so over a minor 7 vamp there is nothing in them that can sound wrong.
It also happens to sit inside minor pentatonic — the pentatonic is these four notes plus the 4th. That means if you already play minor pentatonic, you already have this arpeggio under your fingers; you just have not been separating it out. Practising it alone teaches you which of the pentatonic notes are chord tones and which are passing.
That distinction is most of what makes a line sound aimed rather than merely run.
Where it sits on the neck
Inside minor pentatonic, with two dots removed. Box 1 at the 5th fret holds twelve notes; ten of them are these four, and the two that are not are both D, the 4th — at the 5th fret of the A string and the 7th of the G string.
Take those two out and what is left is an Am7 arpeggio spread across all six strings with your hand exactly where it already was. That is genuinely worth knowing, because it means the arpeggio needs no new fingering at all. It needs a rule about which two dots to skip.
- Root on the A string — the open strings to the 3rd fret.
- Root on the G string — the 2nd fret to the 5th.
- Root on the low E string — the 5th fret to the 8th.
- Root on the D string — the 7th fret to the 10th.
- Root on the B string — the 10th fret to the 13th.
What to play it over
Am7, and any minor vamp with a 7th in it. Over the Am, G and F progression it lands cleanly on the Am and on the F, which shares the A and the C. Over the G it gives you the chord's root plus its 9th, 11th and 13th, so it floats rather than resolving — usable, but not a place to stop.
There is a second way to see it that is worth carrying: A, C, E and G is a C major triad with an A underneath. Play a C major arpeggio over an Am and you have an Am7 without ever touching the root.
Over an A7 it does not work. The C is a ♭3 and the chord has a C♯; that rub is the blues sound when you move through it and a problem when you sit on it, and spelling out a chord means sitting on its notes.
The common mistake
Playing the ♭7 as though it were free. Over an Am7 the G belongs to the chord. Over a plain A minor triad there is no 7th in the harmony at all, and landing on the G adds one whether the band wanted it or not. That is not wrong, but it is a decision about the chord, made by the soloist, usually by accident. Listen to what is underneath before you treat the G as a resting note; if you cannot tell, resolve to the A or the C and you will never be caught out.