Guitar: Whats the difference between arpeggios, scale, riff?

Question:

Guitar: Whats the difference between arpeggios, scale, riff?

I'm learning the guitar myself, but I'm always confuse between this 3 things, scale, arpeggios and riff.

What's the difference between them?

When I see a solo tabs, I can't tell if its scale or arpeggios.. not too sure what riff is either.

Any help? Thanks

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: A scale is a series of notes that ascend or descend to the point where the original note is repeated, one octave above. The scale can be Major, Minor, Melodic minor, Harmonic Minor, Chromatic, Whole tone, Augmented, Diminished, pentatonic or even Hungarian but it will still follow those basic characteristics. Scales are the building blocks or road maps to melodies.

An arpeggio is a broken chord. It can move up or down, but if you smoosh it all together, it forms a chord.

A riff, is a quote. It is a pattern or short melody that makes a song particularly memorable. It can be the beginning of a song like "Smoke On The Water" by Deep Purple or "Layla" by Eric Clapton. It can be the arpeggio at the beginning of "Love is Blue" or "Oh Holy Night." (or even popcorn) It can be the chromatically ascending pattern at the beginning of "Secret Agent Man" by Johnny Rivers ( B - E - C - E - C - E C - C# - E - C - E - C - E) or even the travis pick at the beginning of "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas. A riff is anything that can't really be separated from a song without someone missing it, kind of a mini-solo, but a little more structured.

It is difficult to see solo tabs unless you listen to the piece that they came from, because tabs only tell you where to put your fingers, not when, for how long, or when to take them off. It would be a bit handier to look at the notation in this case. IT tells you all of these things. a scale is a run. it goes up one note at a time

an arpegio uses the first third and fith notes of a scale

a riff is just a tune Scale is a series of notes in ascending or descending order - the main ones are the major and minor scales. An arpeggio is notes of a chord played one by one. And a riff is a lick, a musical phrase.
So for example a C scale is the following notes:
C D E F G A B C
A C arpeggio (I chord) is
C E G
A arpeggio on the V chord (G) would be
G B D F

Think about taking a basic music theory class on line or at your local community college.