The Complete Idiot''s Guide to Music Theory

Chapter 13:Accompanying Melodies 173

The benefit of this approach is that it provides a driving pulse for the song. The
drawback is that you have to pick the right kind of pulse, which requires you to
have some sense of rhythm.

If you don’t have any natural rhythm, you might want to stick to block chords.

Arpeggiated Accompaniment

If you’re playing a slower song, you might want to break up the chords and play
the individual notes in a sequence, like an arpeggio. You can create a simple
arpeggiated accompanimentby playing straight eighth notes over two beats, with
the root of the chord on beat one, the third of the chord on the first upbeat, the
fifth on beat two, and the third (again) on the second upbeat.

Written out, it looks something like this:

Anarpeggiated

accompanimentalso is

often called a broken

chordaccompaniment

because you break the

chord apart and play

each note separately.

Definition

Playing an arpeggiated accompaniment.

You can vary this accompaniment by changing up the order of the chord tones,
varying the rhythm, or even adding passing notes, like this:

An arpeggiated accompaniment with passing tones in addition to the main chord tones.

If you make sure you play the root of the chord in the bass, you have a quick
and easy accompaniment for all types of music.