Steve is currently a guitar tutor at Excelsia College in Sydney, and is also available for private jazz guitar lessons. Please send enquiries about vacancies and costs through the contact form.

Here’s a sample lesson sheet showing how you can use m7b5 arpeggios over dominant 7 chords, creating a dominant 9 sound. It’s also a great way to get used to outlining chord changes by using the 3rd of the chord as your first note in a phrase. Plus, by applying it to a blues, it’s instantly useful even if you aren’t playing many tunes that include m7b5 chords! 🙂

By playing an Am7b5 arpeggio (A,C,Eb,G) over the F7 chord you get the 3,5,b7 and 9 of F, giving you an F9 arpeggio (without a root note). The exercise below shows how you can use this over a 3 chord blues in F. I’ve tried to tweek the lines so they are a tad more musical that simply running the arpeggios, which I think is an important part of making your improvisation sound soulful, rather than a bit mechanical. Let me know what you think!

Cheers,

Steve

Blues Using Half Diminished Arpeggios