How to Write Sweeping Arpeggios • Music Theory from Daft Punk "Motherboard"

Hack Music Theory

How to Write
Sweeping Arpeggios.

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includes multitrack MIDI file

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Intro.

Do your arpeggios all sound rather similar? It’s a common problem for producers.

Arpeggios are when you play a chord one note at a time, and it’s one of the best techniques for making your progressions more interesting. And while it’s definitely more rare to hear arpeggios than “block” chords in popular music genres, most of the arpeggios you do hear are rather boring. Merely playing chords one note at a time is not a foolproof way of making progressions more creative. If you want better arpeggios, you need to write an internal melody within them. Want even better arpeggios? Write two internal melodies, or maybe even three!

What are we talking about when we talk about “internal melodies”? Well, the melodies need to be formed from notes within the arpeggios, as opposed to writing a melody over the top of them. There’s obviously nothing wrong with doing that, but it will be heard as a separate melody, not as part of the arpeggios.

While there’s an abundance of genius examples of this in classical music, there are sadly not many to be found in popular music genres. If you’re into the rock side of things, Muse has plenty of creative arpeggios. Examples are even rarer on the electronic side of things, though, but Daft Punk comes to the rescue with their song “Motherboard” (check out their new “Drumless Edition” of this song, as it’s easier to hear the arpeggios). At 28 seconds into this track, the most beautiful arpeggios begin to sweep up and down. Despite their fast pace (i.e. 1/16 notes), they’re thoroughly calming due to their smooth, sweeping motion. And it’s not just the fast pace that makes their arpeggios so creative, it’s also their choice of notes.

So, inspired by “Motherboard”, here’s our 5-step method for writing sweeping arpeggios, which are guaranteed to stand out from all those boring, clichéd arpeggios. But first… Tea!

Step 1. Chords

As arpeggios are simply broken up chords, the first step is to write a chord progression. So, set your tempo to 103 BPM, then create a four-bar loop and set your grid to 1/16 notes.

Daft Punk play their arpeggios on woodwind instruments, but we’ll get to that in the last step. For now, we actually recommend using a piano, for two reasons. Firstly, piano arpeggios are beautiful, so if you want, you can keep them on a piano sound (we did). Secondly, the piano has a much bigger range than any woodwind instrument, so you won’t be held back by not being able to play a note because it’s too high/low for that instrument.

Daft Punk’s arpeggios are in the key of E minor, so we’ll use it too:

E natural minor

1	2	♭3	4	5	♭6	♭7
Em	F♯dim	Gmaj	Am	Bm	Cmaj	Dmaj

Regarding what chords to choose. This PDF is all about arpeggios, so we’re not going to cover the “chord choice” topic. If you need help with writing better chord progressions, we recommend our Songwriting & Producing Course.

The only three guidelines we suggest are to choose four chords, avoid the diminished chord, and play the root chord somewhere (you don’t have to start with it, though). Here are the chords we chose for our progression:

Cmaj → Gmaj → Dmaj → Em

After you’ve chosen your four chords, draw in each chord’s root note for one bar.

Root note of each chord in progression

Step 2. Low

Just a heads up, those long root notes are just there for reference, they’re not going to be part of your final arpeggios (you’ll mute them in the last step). Having the root notes there while writing arpeggios is a super helpful hack, because it allows you to hear the interval/harmony between each note in your arpeggio and the root of that chord. This way you can hear if each note is conveying the right emotion.

Now, in this step you’re going to write the lower portion of your arpeggios. You see, sweeping arpeggios tend to cover a wide range. That’s what gives them their unique sound. Those boring, clichéd arpeggios that you hear most often usually only cover the range of each chord, which is almost always one octave or less.

The range of Daft Punk’s arpeggios is just over two and a half octaves, and the range of ours ended up being just over three octaves. Those are massive ranges! And that’s one of the most notable features of sweeping arpeggios.

As we mentioned in Step 1, writing this on the piano is ideal because not all instruments can accommodate huge ranges. We don’t know if this range issue was the inspiration behind Daft Punk dividing up their sweeping arpeggios between the clarinet and flute, but it sure is a beautiful outcome. The clarinet has a lower range than the flute, so their arpeggios start with four lower 1/16 notes on the clarinet, then the flute takes over and plays four higher 1/16 notes. So beautiful!

We decided to do three notes for the lower portion of our arpeggios, because it gives us five notes to navigate up to the climactic peak and back down again. However, please feel free to use Daft Punk’s four-and-four formula instead.

The lower portion of your arpeggio is going to be the first three (or four) 1/16 notes. So spend some time now experimenting with what notes you want to begin your arpeggios with. You’re going to use the same pattern for each chord, so make sure you really like the notes and their contour. We chose the (shockingly) simple pattern of 1, 2, 3, because we’ve got a trick up our sleeves that we’ll reveal below.

Lower portion (highlighted) of Cmaj arpeggio

This lower arpeggio portion needs to anchor it, so playing the root is a must. You don’t have to start on the root, but it’s not a bad idea. Daft Punk do, and so do we.

When you’re happy with your three/four notes, copy and paste them into beat 3.

And yes, you’re going to sweep up and down twice over each chord. There’s two reasons for this. Firstly, the repetition will help your arpeggios to be more memorable. And secondly, if you only did one sweep up and down in each bar, your range would be absolutely ridiculously gigantic! As we mentioned above, our final arpeggios ended up sweeping across three octaves in a mere two beats, so imagine the GARGANTUAN range you’d end up with if your arpeggios swept over four beats, instead of two. That’s definitely way too much of a good thing!

Now, here’s the trick we mentioned above. Instead of playing the same three/four notes in beat 3. Move them to create a variation. For the record, Daft Punk doesn’t do this in their song, it’s our little hack to add more melody into the arpeggios.

And to make things even more interesting here, we don’t start this second lower portion on the root note, we start on the 5. We then play the root, and then the 3.

Second lower portion (highlighted) of Cmaj arpeggio

When you’re happy with the second lower portion of your arpeggio, play the same pattern over your other three chords. Our lower pattern is: 1, 2, 3 and then 5, 1, 3.

Lower portion of Gmaj arpeggio

Lower portion of Dmaj arpeggio

Lower portion of Em arpeggio

Step 3. Peak

Now that the lower part of your arpeggios is complete, it’s time for the upper part. Instead of writing this in one go, though, we’re going to divide it up. This allows us to bring more melody into the upper part, but we’ll get to that in the next step. For now, we’re focusing on the peak, which is where your arpeggios will reach their highest note. After that, they’ll begin their descent. High notes are attention-grabbing, so these peaks will stand out. Therefore, writing them first prevents us from getting distracted by the other high notes that’ll lead up to them.

So, choose two (or maybe three) notes that you like over your first chord. Your peak is going to happen in beat 2, and then again in beat 4. But, before you get too attached to the notes you’ve chosen, copy and paste them over the next two chords as well. In other words, you’re going to play the same two/three notes as your peak in bars one through three. That peak has to sound equally good over all three chords. If it doesn’t, try different notes. This is a brilliant hack of Daft Punk’s, as that repetition creates stability through all their fast-paced arpeggios.

We used F♯ and G as our peak notes. Over our first chord, Cmaj, the G is 5 and the F♯ is ♯4. Daft Punk plays the F♯ over Cmaj as well. We wanted to do that too, so we could share how clever this note choice is. You see, with their first chord being Cmaj, that ♯4 makes it sound like they’re in the Lydian mode*. This is a super clever and creative illusion, and makes their arpeggios instantly stand out!

*If you’re new to the modes, we recommend taking our Songwriting & Producing Course.

Peak notes over Cmaj

Peak notes copied and pasted (highlighted) into bars two and three

So what about the peak notes in your fourth bar? Well, Daft Punk use a double-hack in their fourth bar. They use different peak notes. This creates a variation, which keeps the listener’s attention. And, it becomes the climax of their arpeggios as well. So, your fourth bar is going to contain the highest two/three notes of all your arpeggios. Try to create a satisfying, concluding feeling with them too. Also, while Daft Punk uses the same notes for both peaks in their fourth bar, we used different notes. This adds even more melody into our arpeggios.

One thing to consider with your peak notes is to try a combination of harmonic notes (i.e. from the chord) and non-harmonic notes (i.e. not from the chord). If those concepts are new to you, here’s a couple of examples to demonstrate. Over the Cmaj chord, the harmonic notes are C (1), E (3), and G (5), because they’re in the chord. The non-harmonic notes over Cmaj are D (2), F♯ (♯4), A (6), and B (7).

If you only use harmonic notes for your peaks, it will sound boring. If you only use non-harmonic notes for your peaks, it will sound like you got lost in your own progression. And yes, as long as you use notes from the scale, they’ll all sound fine, but we’re not going for “fine” here, we’re going for jaw-droppingly beautiful. Lastly, leave space for at least one 1/16 note after each peak (for the next step).

Climax of peak notes (highlighted) over root chord, Em, in last bar

Step 4. Middle

Now that we’ve got the top bit of our arpeggios written, as well as the complete lower part, we’re going to write a melody in between them.

This middle melody is probably our favourite thing about these arpeggios. Everything in these sweeping ascents and descents is beautiful, but this middle melody is like an extra special gem hidden amongst all that beauty. The reason for that is because you don’t notice it at first, but the more you listen, the more the movement of these middle notes begins to pop out as an independent melody.

For the record, this middle melody isn’t in the Daft Punk song, but we saw another opportunity to weave in even more melodic material to our arpeggios, and we just couldn’t help ourselves!

So right after your peak notes (in that space you left open in Step 3), you’re going to add a note. Depending on how much space you have there, you may have to add two notes, as this needs to link up to the lower part of your arpeggios.

With this step, it’s essential to hear these middle notes as a single melody across the whole four-bar loop. So, start by adding the middle notes over your first chord in bar one. As you move on to each new chord, though, be sure to keep listening to the entire four-bar loop. If you don’t, you’ll lose the context of these middle notes forming an independent melody. It’s a tricky step, because you need to find notes that sound good harmonically over each chord, while also sounding good melodically. Take your time finding these notes.

Over Cmaj we chose E and D, which are the 3 and 2 respectively.

Over Gmaj we chose D and A, which are the 5 and 2 respectively.

Over Dmaj we chose A and G, which are the 5 and 4 respectively.

Over Em we chose G and E, which are the ♭3 and 1 respectively.

Once again, notice the combination of harmonic and non-harmonic notes. Each chord has one of each, other than our final chord, which is the root, Em. Over that chord we chose two harmonic notes, as we wanted a strong conclusion.

Final middle melody (highlighted)

Step 5. Link

Let’s wrap this up. As you can see in your MIDI, the only missing bits in your arpeggios now are in between your lower part and the peaks. So let’s link ‘em up!

Depending on how many notes you used in the previous steps, you’ll only need one or two to link them. Once again, use a combo of harmonic and non-harmonic notes. For example, over our first chord, Cmaj, we used C (1) and D (2).

While these links are important for creating a smooth and flowing contour, it’s not necessary for them to form an independent melody of their own. Your weave of melodic material is thick already, so these links only need to join everything up. Having said that, though, we don’t like wasting any opportunity to add more beauty, so…

As you can see in the MIDI below, we actually managed to create counterpoint* within our linking notes. We used two notes for these links. Each link’s first note forms a descending melody, while each link’s second note forms an ascending melody. This is subtle, but the counterpoint adds a depth that wasn’t there before.

*If you’re new to counterpoint, that’s also covered in our Songwriting & Producing Course.

Link notes (highlighted)

Your arpeggios are now complete. All that’s left is to decide how you want to play them. If you’ve fallen in love with them as piano arpeggios (like we did), then simply mute those long root notes at the bottom, and you’re done!

Otherwise, if you’d like to play your arpeggios on woodwind instruments like Daft Punk, then duplicate this track a couple times. On the one track, delete the low arpeggios and select a flute to play the remaining high arpeggios (the flute’s range is high). Then on the other track, delete the high arpeggios and select a clarinet to play the remaining low arpeggios (the clarinet’s range is lower than the flute’s).

And with that, you’re done.

So sit back, hit play, and enjoy your sweeping arpeggios that are not only jaw-droppingly beautiful, they’re also gonna stand out from all those boring, clichéd arpeggios!

Final arpeggios, with low and high parts (highlighted) played on different instruments

[long root notes below are muted]

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