Melodic Minor Guitar Arpeggios

How to use these chord-tone maps

An arpeggio plays a chord’s notes one at a time. Each table harmonizes one melodic-minor mode by taking alternate notes from its ordered seven-note collection: three notes for a triad and four for a seventh chord.

Every mode example starts on C, making the formulas easy to compare. These are C-root examples of each mode, not seven rotations that all keep the notes of C melodic minor. Chord intervals are measured from each chord’s own root.

This reference uses the fixed ascending melodic-minor collection and its modes. Classical melodic-minor practice can use natural minor when descending; that direction-aware practice is a different task from the fixed chord-tone reference shown here.

Read a chord’s notes in order, then use its fretboard chart to find them across the neck. The linked chart opens the same scale with that chord’s tones highlighted; it also includes the full scale and its position maps.

Note names follow the chart library’s sharp-based display: D# and E♭, for example, identify the same pitch here. Chord interval labels show each tone’s relationship to its chord root. Use the guitar intervals reference to read those formulas on the fretboard.