Major and Minor Arpeggios –
Great Pitching Exercises for Singing!

Arpeggios are extremely useful vocal exercises for singers, as they train our pitching ability as well as our ability to sing musical intervals, and also to make pitch jumps when we sing. They are also a great scale to sing for beginner singers, or for those who wish to train their pitch and listening ability.

Arpeggiatic Progressions are actually created by using selected chord notes from the various major and minor scales, to create these arpeggiatic scales in Major and Minor Keys respectively.

 

 

The 1st 3 notes of these arpeggiatic scales are usually made up of a Major 3rd and a Perfect 5th interval for Major keys, and a Minor 3rd and Perfect 5th Interval for Minor Keys.

Check out this section on ‘Major Intervals’ to find out more about these terms!

Here is what a Major Arpeggiatic progression looks like in solfege notation:

1 (Doh), 3 (Mi), 5 (Sol), 1 (High Doh)Here is what a Minor Arpeggiatic progression would look like in solfege notation (if we were to write it in such a way as to avoid writing sharps or flats):

6 (Low la), 1 (Doh), 3 (Mi), 6 (La)For those who wish to play these scales on a piano or keyboard, check out the various tables below for the actual piano notes to play for each Major or Minor progression:

 

 

For those who do not have any musical instrument, do not worry, i have uploaded loads of music here for you to be able to practise these pitching exercises from the comfort of your own home!

Do make sure that you use proper breathing technique when you sing, and be very familiar with your basic breathing exercises before attempting the various musical scales and intervals singing.

Also, make sure you do some basic vocal warmup exercises to ensure that your voice is properly stretched out, before you attempt to sing these musical scales and pitching exercises.

There are also some other basic musical scales uploaded on the ‘Musical Scales for Warmup’ section of this website, and these will serve as a primer for this webpage. Here is the music for the Major Arpeggios – the 1st note of each exercise is sounded first, followed by the scale played in an ascending manner (from the lowest note to its highest note), and then played in a descending manner (from the highest note to its lowest note):

B Flat Major Key

B Major Key

C Major Key

C Sharp Major Key

D Major Key

Here is the music for the Minor Arpeggios:

B Flat Minor Key

B Minor Key

C Minor Key

C Sharp Minor Key

D Minor Key

Always make sure to practise proper singing and breathing technique, and not to commit some of the common singing problems made, so as to be able to achieve maximum effect when practising these pitching exercises!

For those who would like to know more about Major and Minor Arpeggios and how they are structured, here are some diagrams explaining in detail the notes that make up each of these arpeggiatic progressions that are such useful pitching exercises too:

 

As you can see from the above diagram, the Major Arpeggio is made up of various chord notes – in this case, it would be C, E, G of a C Major Scale – and there is a fixed structure laid out by the number of semitones between each of the notes in the scale progression. With this structure, you can create any arpeggiatic progression in any Major or Minor Key you desire!

For those who wish to know more about Major Scales and how they are created, check out the link provided here.

 

With regards to the Minor Arpeggio, it also follows a certain structure, and the above diagram uses the chord notes (A, C, E) of a A Minor Scale. There is also a fixed structure laid out by the number of semitones between each of the notes, and this is actually derived from the structure of a Minor Scale! Do check out the link provided if you wish to know more about this musical scale!

With this knowledge about the various major and minor arpeggios, we would be able to practise our musical scales and pitching exercises with more understanding and achieve a great singing voice that is always perfectly in tune!



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