A broken chord is a chord broken into a sequence of notes. A broken chord may repeat some of the notes from the chord and span one or more octaves. An arpeggio (Italian: [arˈpeddʒo]) is a type of broken chord, in which the notes that compose a chord are played or sung in a rising or descending order. An arpeggio may also span more than one octave.Being an Italian noun, its plural is arpeggi. The word arpeggio comes from the Italian word arpeggiare, which means to play on a harp.