You can create colorful lines by superimposing arpeggiated triads over a tune's harmony. Handled creatively, simple major, minor, augmented, and diminished triads become potent improvisational tools. The trick is to link them together in unexpected ways.

Try Ex. 1, a line composed entirely of arpeggios derived from six triads -- C, D, B, E, G, and F. Play this line against a sustaining C chord, and listen carefully as your fingers jump around the fretboard. Can you hear how this interval-oriented technique generates distinctly different results from scale-based approaches? To encourage you to experiment with fretting-hand fingering, I've deliberately not added any to this and subsequent examples. First focus on the melodies; you can always refine the fingering later.

Ex. 2 features D

, Am, Dm, Fm, A, E, A, E, and G triads played over Dm. Within four bars, you've arpeggiated 12 triads (or triad fragments) and introduced six altered notes.

The eight different triads -- Abdim, D

, G, E, B, A, A, and Dm -- in Ex. 3 create tension-and-release against G7. The melodic contour resembles a roller coaster, yet, as with the previous examples, you end up on a totally consonant "home" triad.

Ex. 4 shows how you can apply this technique to a IIm-V7-I progression in G. Again, there are lots of triads and unusual alterations, yet the fingerings will be familiar to anyone who has practiced triads up and down the fretboard.

Along with its sonic benefits, arpeggiating triads can give your picking hand a serious workout. Try Ex. 5 slowly at first -- the string jumps are tricky.