Dominant ninth chords (usually just called “ninth chords” by guitarists) are common in blues, jazz, and popular music. They are made up of the root, third, fifth, flatted seventh, and ninth. A C9, for example, would be C, E, G, Bb, and D. These five notes, if played sequentially, moving the D down to the second step (C, D, E, G, Bb) create the C dominant pentatonic scale. In this next series of workouts, you’ll learn some dominant ninth arpeggios and some runs using the dominant pentatonic scale, which, as you might imagine, are very useful for playing over dominant chords. Example 1 shows two A9 arpeggios. The arpeggio in the second octave skips the root and goes right from the ninth to the third. Example 2 puts the root back in the middle of the arpeggio. Example 3 is the A dominant pentatonic scale. Dominant nine arpeggios are handy for a variety of reasons. If you start the arpeggio on the third of the chord you get a minor seven flat five arpeggio. So, for example, if you start the A9 arpeggio on C# (the third) you get a C#m7b5 arpeggio, shown in Example 4. If you start the arpeggio from the fifth of the chord, you get a minor six chord: Em6 in A, as shown in Example 5. So by becoming familiar with these five notes, you’ll have things to play over ninth chords, any dominant chord (using the dominant pentatonic scale), minor seven flat five chords, and minor six chords. Example 6 is an example of the kind of line you can create using the A dominant pentatonic scale and A9 arpeggios.