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Posted by: The Professor Apr 10 2013, 11:19 AM

In today’s music theory lesson we’ll be looking at how to build Maj9 arpeggios from both a chord and scale approach to this cool-sounding melodic device.

The first approach that you can use to build Maj9 arpeggios is to take a Maj7 chord, and simply add in a 9th on top of those four notes.

If you need a refresher on Maj7 Arpeggios, check out the http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_forum/index.php?showtopic=48434 lesson in the GMC Forum.

Here is how this approach looks on paper. Notice that the first bar contains the Root, 3rd, 5th and 7th of a Cmaj7 chord. Then, in the second bar, you simply add one more note, the 9th, to produce a Cmaj9 Arpeggio, Root-3rd-5th-7th-9th.






The second approach you can use to build a Maj9 Arpeggio is to look at the http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_forum/index.php?showtopic=48048&st=0#entry634876, then just pull out the first, third, fifth, seventh and ninth notes of that scale and you have a Maj9 Arpeggio.

Here is how that looks on paper. Notice that the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th notes of the scale produce the five notes needed to build the Maj9 Arpeggio, CMaj9 in this case.









Now that you have learned how to build Maj9 Arpeggios, try writing out a number of them in the comments section below to get some practice with these shapes.

If you write out some, or all, of the different Maj9 Arpeggios I’ll be happy to look over your work and make sure you’re on the right track.