Scales meet arpeggios: one drill for the whole fretboard

I built Arpèges to do one thing: flash an arpeggio and make me find it on the neck. It's a good drill. It's also half of one.

You can nail every chord tone in every position and still freeze the moment a line wants to move between them — because the notes between the chord tones live in the scale, and for a long time the app never once showed me the scale. I'd drill a Cmaj7 until I could grab those four notes anywhere, then pick up the guitar to actually play, reach for the fifth note of the phrase — the one that isn't a chord tone — and have nothing.

The new version fixes that. Scales and modes come off the same deck as the arpeggios now: same card, same padlocks, dealt in the same shuffle. It's the update I'd wanted for months, and the one that changed what the app is — not a chord-tone randomizer, but a drill for both halves of the fretboard at once.

Key takeaways

Arpeggios and scales are two views of one harmony — the chord tones, and the seven notes they sit inside. You need both under your hands.

Arpèges now deals scales and modes off the same deck as the arpeggios, so you train the pair together instead of in separate sessions.

Shuffling the two so you never know which is next feels harder than drilling them in blocks — and that is exactly why it sticks.

A fourth padlock, Type, picks the mix: scales only, arpeggios only, or both.

The skeleton and the room

Play a Cmaj7 as an arpeggio and you get four notes — the chord taken apart, one at a time:

The C major 7 arpeggio: C, E, G, B — the four chord tones, one at a time.

C major 7 arpeggio — C E G B

Those four always sound right over the chord. But you don't play only chord tones — you'd run out of music by the second bar. The interesting notes are the ones in between, and they come from the scale:

The C major scale: C D E F G A B C — the seven notes the chord lives inside.

C major scale — C D E F G A B C

Same harmony, two resolutions of it. The arpeggio is the skeleton; the scale is the room you move around in. Drill only arpeggios and your lines land but never breathe. Drill only scales and you run notes without knowing which ones are load-bearing. Arpèges used to teach the first and stay silent on the second. Now it teaches both.

Why the shuffle beats the block

Here's the uncomfortable part. The way that feels most productive — twenty minutes of arpeggios, then twenty of scales, each repeated till it's smooth — is mostly a con. A few reps in, your hand stops looking the shape up and starts coasting on the last one. It feels smooth because you're not really recalling anything; you're copying the rep before it.

Shuffle them instead — arpeggio, scale, scale, arpeggio, no idea what's next — and the coasting stops. Every card is a cold question: what is this, where is it, how does it fall under my fingers. You make more mistakes. You feel slower. You leave less sure of yourself. And it works better, because that cold pull is exactly what you do on a gig — the right shape out of nowhere, no warm-up block to lean on. The discomfort isn't a side effect. It's the part that's working.

If a drill feels effortless, be suspicious. Smoothness a few reps into a block usually means you've stopped recalling and started coasting. Shuffle the order and the difficulty — and the learning — comes back.

The old app couldn't offer this; it only had one kind of card. The new one shuffles by default: leave both types on and every Next is a coin-flip.

Type: the fourth padlock

Every prompt is four choices now, not three. The card has always locked Key, Quality and Zone — the note, the flavour, the patch of neck. The new one sits in front: Type, arpeggio or scale.

That padlock is what makes the mix yours to set. Leave it open and the deck deals both. Close it on a scale and every card stays a scale — key, mode and zone keep rerolling, but the kind of thing holds. It's the difference between "surprise me" and "scales today, keep them coming." Flip it the other way and it's the old chord-tone grind, untouched.

Twenty-one, not just major and minor

Turning scales on doesn't just hand you major and minor. Arpèges ships twenty-one scales and modes: the modes of the major scale you'd expect — dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian — plus the ones most trainers skip, the modes of the harmonic and melodic minor scales, where the jazzier colours live.

Lydian is the easy one to fall for: a major scale with one raised note, the 4th, and that single change is the whole bright, floating, film-score thing.

E lydian: E F♯ G♯ A♯ B C♯ D♯ E — a major scale with a raised 4th (A♯), the bright, floating mode.

E lydian — E F♯ G♯ A♯ B C♯ D♯ E

The card flags that raised 4th in the degree row, so you're not just running notes — you can see which one is doing the work. Drill a mode enough and it stops being a chart you memorise and turns into a sound you recognise under your fingers.

How I actually use it

The padlocks are the whole interface, so a practice plan is just a plan for which ones you close:

Scales day. Draw until a scale lands, lock Type, and work keys and zones with the mode fixed — or leave the mode open and let it quiz you across all twenty-one. Good for the days you're building vocabulary.

Arpeggios day. Lock Type the other way and it's the chord-tone drill the app started as. Nothing lost.

Mixed day. Leave Type open. This is the one that transfers, and the one you'll want to skip because it feels hard. Do it anyway.

Position work. Add a Zone lock on top of any of those to keep it in one patch of neck, then move the patch tomorrow. That's how the shapes tile the whole fretboard instead of living in one box.

When you want it to count, start a Session with a rep goal. Finish a mixed one and the summary gives you the split — how many arpeggios, how many scales — so "I practised both" stops being a feeling and becomes a number.

Does Arpèges teach modes, or only major and minor scales?

Both. Twenty-one scales and modes: the seven modes of the major scale, plus the modes of the harmonic and melodic minor scales — the colours most practice tools leave out. Drill any single one, or let the app quiz you across all of them.

Can I practise scales without arpeggios (or the other way round)?

Yes — that's what the Type padlock is for. Lock it on a scale and every card stays a scale; lock it the other way for a pure arpeggio session; leave it open to shuffle both.

Why does mixing scales and arpeggios help more than practising them separately?

Shuffling the two forces your hand to actually recall each shape instead of coasting on repetition. It feels messier than block practice, and it builds the recall that shows up when you're playing for real — the right shape, cold, with no warm-up block to lean on.

Where does it run?

In your browser, at arpeggio.webeleon.dev — nothing to install. It's an independent Webeleon prototype, so treat it as a sharp little tool rather than a finished platform.

If you've been using Arpèges as an arpeggio trainer, open it again and switch the scales on. It's a different practice partner now.

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