Guitar: Whats the difference between arpeggios, scale, riff?

Question

I'm learning the guitar myself, but I'm always confuse between this 3 things, scale, arpeggios and riff.

What's the difference between them?

When I see a solo tabs, I can't tell if its scale or arpeggios.. not too sure what riff is either.

Any help? Thanks

Answer 1

A scale is a series of notes that ascend or descend to the point where the original note is repeated, one octave above. The scale can be Major, Minor, Melodic minor, Harmonic Minor, Chromatic, Whole tone, Augmented, Diminished, pentatonic or even Hungarian but it will still follow those basic characteristics. Scales are the building blocks or road maps to melodies.

An arpeggio is a broken chord. It can move up or down, but if you smoosh it all together, it forms a chord.

A riff, is a quote. It is a pattern or short melody that makes a song particularly memorable. It can be the beginning of a song like "Smoke On The Water" by Deep Purple or "Layla" by Eric Clapton. It can be the arpeggio at the beginning of "Love is Blue" or "Oh Holy Night." (or even popcorn) It can be the chromatically ascending pattern at the beginning of "Secret Agent Man" by Johnny Rivers ( B - E - C - E - C - E C - C# - E - C - E - C - E) or even the travis pick at the beginning of "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas. A riff is anything that can't really be separated from a song without someone missing it, kind of a mini-solo, but a little more structured.

It is difficult to see solo tabs unless you listen to the piece that they came from, because tabs only tell you where to put your fingers, not when, for how long, or when to take them off. It would be a bit handier to look at the notation in this case. IT tells you all of these things.

Answer 2

Arpeggio Scales

Answer 3

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The major scale is 7 notes starting with a root note and ending with the same note an octave higher. ALL of the chords in the a particular key are derived from the scale. An arpeggio is a chord played one note at a time and only uses the notes in that specific chord. Your standard arpeggio consists of only 4 notes (root, 3rd, 5th, 7th) C maj scale C D E F G A B C C maj7 arpeggio C E G B (notice that the arpeggio contains every OTHER note in the scale)

Answer 4

Scale is a series of notes in ascending or descending order - the main ones are the major and minor scales. An arpeggio is notes of a chord played one by one. And a riff is a lick, a musical phrase.
So for example a C scale is the following notes:
C D E F G A B C
A C arpeggio (I chord) is
C E G
A arpeggio on the V chord (G) would be
G B D F

Think about taking a basic music theory class on line or at your local community college.

Answer 5

Arpeggios are the notes of a chord played individually. A scale is a set of notes from which the melody and harmony are derived. Melody came first. Without scales, there would be no chords. It's not only useful to know all the notes within a key, but knowing the scale also tells you what chords are in that key. You also know what notes to use for your melody, solo, or accompaniment. You're never limited to the notes/chords from a single key. That would be boring. There are lots of very interesting and effective ways to use non-diatonic chords and melody notes in your music. If you pay close attention to the music you learn, you should pick up on a few of them.

Answer 6

RE:
Guitar: Whats the difference between arpeggios, scale, riff?
I'm learning the guitar myself, but I'm always confuse between this 3 things, scale, arpeggios and riff.

What's the difference between them?

When I see a solo tabs, I can't tell if its scale or arpeggios.. not too sure what riff is either.

Any help? Thanks

Answer 7

These days you can learn how to play guitar over the internet. Check out Mark McKenzie's guitar video lessons here: http://www.jamoramaguitar.com The videos are very easy to follow and to my surprise extremely helpful even for advanced guitar players. For beginners I would have to say this is a gold mine.

I was able to improve my skills in just under 4 weeks and I am an intermediate-to-advanced guitar player; I've been playing guitar for the past 6 years and I was on stage with my band a lot of times.

I live in New York City, I wanted to go to a pro guitar teacher but that would have cost me over $1400 per month. Good thing with this internet, $1400 it's a lot of money for me. Good luck!

Answer 8

a scale is a run. it goes up one note at a time

an arpegio uses the first third and fith notes of a scale

a riff is just a tune