Arpeggios and Broken Chords
Warm-up · Classroom · Grades 4-12 · 4 to 9 min
Outline the chord one note at a time: root, third, fifth, octave, and back. Major and minor, key by key -- the fastest way to make a scale routine hear harmony instead of just steps.
The rights, in plain language
This is our own original warm-up — a generic, public-domain music-theory technique written out in our own words, free to use, print, and teach at your school with no royalty and no fee.
Print as many copies as you need, and use it in your classroom and rehearsals — free, with no royalty and no fee. Keep the Free School Music credit on any handout you copy. For the full terms, see Licensing & rights.
How to use this warm-up
Run it at the top of rehearsal or class. Read it here, or print it — or save it as a PDF — straight from your browser for the rehearsal room. It is free, with nothing to sign.
What this warm-up is
Outlining a chord one note at a time — root, third, fifth, octave, and back down — instead of stepping through a scale. Broken chords are standard music theory that belongs to everyone; this is simply our own plain routine for running them.
How to use this warm-up
Any instrument or voice. Do it right after the scale warm-up in the same key, so the ensemble hears how the arpeggio is the scale’s skeleton — just the chord tones, with the steps in between left out.
The exercise, step by step
- In the day’s key, play the major arpeggio: the first note (root), the third, the fifth, the octave — then back down. One note per beat.
- Play the minor arpeggio from the same starting note: root, lowered third, fifth, octave, and back. Listen to how only one note changes and how much the color changes with it.
- Rest a beat, then move to the next key and repeat both.
- Keep the tempo even. Chord tones should sound solid and centered, not rushed.
Teaching tips
- Name the notes: “root, third, fifth” out loud the first few times builds the theory into the fingers.
- Major then minor, same root, so the single changed note (the third) is unmistakable.
- Watch the octave. The leap to the top note is where tuning and evenness usually slip; take it deliberately.
Variations
- Add the seventh: for older students, extend to root-third-fifth-seventh for dominant and other seventh chords.
- Inversions: start the arpeggio from the third or the fifth instead of the root, to hear the same chord from a different bottom note.
- Sing then play the chord tones first, so the ear knows where the fingers are going.
What it builds
An ear for harmony rather than just melody, cleaner leaps between chord tones, and the recognition of major and minor by sound. Much of the repertoire is built out of broken chords; running them daily makes those passages read themselves.