How to Use arpeggio in a Sentence

arpeggio

noun
  • The guitarist warmed up with a few simple arpeggios.
  • Step right this way, through the glittering synth arpeggio and the moody breakbeat.
    — Katie Bain, Billboard, 26 Aug. 2022
  • The piano plays mostly arpeggios; the strings fixate for hundreds of bars on a pair of hazy four-note chords.
    — Alex Ross, New Yorker, 26 Jan. 2026
  • To actually construct an arpeggio or a response to the call of the singer.
    — Michael Goldberg, Rolling Stone, 19 May 2022
  • In place of steady strumming, Weir played arpeggios, single notes, little riffs, and odd, jazzy chords.
    — David A. Graham, The Atlantic, 12 Jan. 2026
  • Safdie asked him to include intricate, quasi-Baroque arpeggios.
    — Jack Denton, Vulture, 30 Dec. 2025
  • In the third, each note in a sixteenth-note arpeggio is sliced into its own arpeggio of thirty-second notes.
    — Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker, 7 Aug. 2024
  • The end of the second movement closes with a super-soft arpeggio that sits on a suspension.
    — Christian Hertzog, San Diego Union-Tribune, 11 Aug. 2023
  • Clarinets gurgle in arpeggios, because that’s what clarinets do.
    — Russell Platt, The New Yorker, 3 Feb. 2017
  • Then the person across from me added a synth arpeggio on top and another set up a hi-hat sequence using a drum machine.
    — Miguel Otárola, Denver Post, 29 Dec. 2025
  • Waves of arpeggios that crash resoundingly from the opening chord, a near-flood of instant feelings.
    — Andrew Unterberger, Billboard, 15 Jan. 2018
  • Now the frenzied chords and blizzard of arpeggios in Chopin’s Prolinase are a piece of cake to play.
    — R. Douglas Fields, Scientific American, 27 Mar. 2018
  • These pages are full of finger exercises, arpeggios of thought and perception.
    — Parul Sehgal, New York Times, 27 Mar. 2018
  • The fat lady is doing arpeggios backstage at the Bellagio.
    — Sean Keeler, Denver Post, 23 May 2026
  • Lifeson’s closing guitar solo, looping through arpeggios, managed to take in all of that emotion and quadruple it.
    — Brian Hiatt, Rolling Stone, 8 June 2026
  • In the second, the strings mostly took over the arpeggios, holding them to a statelier tempo, and the elements inspired by the chants came more to the fore.
    — New York Times, 13 May 2018
  • With soft strumming bass rhythms and waves of an acoustic arpeggio, Okereke’s calming voice on this track has never sounded so crystal clear.
    — Paris Close, Billboard, 24 Oct. 2017
  • The vast stillness of the second movement, with spectral arpeggios chiming on a prepared piano, was all the more potent in contrast.
    — Alex Ross, New Yorker, 3 Nov. 2025
  • That beautiful language, with its lilting consonants and arpeggios of vowels.
    — Lina Mounzer, Condé Nast Traveler, 12 Apr. 2023
  • During a final episode the music becomes like a dance for Apu, all swirling arpeggios, fractured rhythms and myriad shadings.
    — Anthony Tommasini, New York Times, 23 July 2017
  • Impressionistic string arpeggios, along with other rapid figures, moody thick chords and glissandi pervade much of the piece.
    — Mark Swed, latimes.com, 16 Apr. 2018
  • The songs are strictly post-punk with intricate guitar parts that toggle between heavy riffs and arpeggios, high-energy drums, and low-key vocal hooks.
    — Aaron Carnes, sacbee, 1 June 2018
  • Piano arpeggios drift in on the soundtrack, suggesting something lighter and more accepting even as the music flirts with atonality.
    — Bilge Ebiri, Vulture, 15 Nov. 2024
  • In the first movement, the piano purveyed rippling arpeggios, a Glassian trademark, while the strings worked through melodic figures.
    — New York Times, 13 May 2018
  • The fourth becomes a sophisticated lesson in arpeggios and the last, a fanciful passacaglia.
    — Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, 3 June 2026
  • The brothers mix up the approach, with one anchoring the rhythm with a gentle arpeggio or bass-like melody, keeping time with a soft tap on the strings, while the other carries the main melody.
    — Jem Aswad, Variety, 28 Oct. 2022
  • This is a pointillist subjectivity, a psyche playing arpeggios.
    — Tobi Haslett, Harper's Magazine, 18 Sep. 2023
  • During each phase, the musicians would run through scales and arpeggios at varying volumes and tempos, performing dozens of intonations of every note.
    — Chuck Squatriglia, Popular Science, 10 Jan. 2020
  • This was aided by Nelsons’s crisp conducting and the occasional arpeggio from a harpsichord in the recitatives.
    — Jeremy Yudkin, BostonGlobe.com, 17 July 2023
  • Each took a stumble here and there and the slow movement sounded tenuous, but their arpeggios in vigorous harmony and triumphant finale were more memorable.
    — Zoë Madonna, BostonGlobe.com, 19 Aug. 2019

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'arpeggio.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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