Chromatic madness

[Autark]

What is the hardest chromatic exercise you have ever seen/heard? Can you post it please?

[noticingthemistake]

Flight of the Bumblebee. If you can play that, then you pretty much got your chromes in your pocket. I think it's Petrucci that has alot of different ones on his site.

[Jolly McJollyson]

There's a powertab file for it on Luismoreno.com, it's under the "advanced lessons" section.

[TheWizard]

parts of paganini's fifth caprice

I think it requires you to hit every note on the fret board

try that one out

http://alt.venus.co.uk/weed/music/classtab/welcome.htm#ptab

http://alt.venus.co.uk/weed/music/classtab/npc01_05.txt

[Autark]

Anyway, do you guys thing that practicing chromatics would be useful? Do you think that it's worth spending time on?

[aiwass]

I would only practice chromatics sparsely. They don't come in handy that often, and NOTHING, I reiterate, NOTHING is worse than guitarists who play 1234 chromatic patterns whenever they have to do some fast alternate-picked runs. I blame Petrucci's Rock Discipline. He meant it as an exercise, but too many kids seem to have mistaken it for something musical...

[Death55]

I have petrucci rock disapline dvd. He does go over chromatics lots. I agree with you here aiwass. They arent really used very much for soloing. They can be good sometimes though. Perhaps for some insane tapping stuff or legato. I usually stick to 3 note per string scales and maybe use some pentatonic stuff when i'm improvising.

[Starjammer]

I think the value of practicing cromatics (in my experience) lies in improved coordination between your right and left hands. I've seen incredible improvements in my picking ability from devoting entire practice sessions to cromatic exercises (w/ metronome). I do agree, however, that the cromatics themselves are not very useful in a song/solo, although they can sound pretty cool here and there in a jazzy context.

[noticingthemistake]

Yeah I agree chromatics should not be used as a defining scale in a solo. But they are nice over a pedal or drone carefully placed and not overrly placed. Melodically, they should be carefully used not to create an unkempt passage. The fault here is playing them insistantly linear, the 12 tone system is a great way to use chromatics melodically or even harmonically if properly understood.

A tip, when writting a linear chromatic passage, try not to go in one direction for too long. It's boring. Ex. play 5 notes down, then go up. Zig-zag chromatic (not always a semi-tone either) patterns can be very lively, think flight of the bumblebee. I'm sure petrucci said something similar.

[Edited by noticingthemistake on 01-20-2004 at 04:26 AM]

[Death55]

i know in one dream theater song he uses a riff that uses chromatics.

[The Ace]

Me 2 (goin along with Aiwass and Noticingthemistake) chromatics can be used as great passing tones or to add contrast or color, but over all they don't have as much meaning as many think they do. It is great to learn some about them, just don't over use them or your melodies will sound like a mess. They are great excersizes though.

[Autark]

I play chromatics as exercises, I don't use them in songs (for now)...

[dinell2]

I think chromatic exercises are good for many reasons. First off... great warm up exercises come from chromatic exercises. Secondly, there really good to know for when your in a pinch. Sometimes very organic sounds are found this way.

Check out this site:
http://www.guitarsite.com/PickingExercises/chromatic1.html

Check out my page...
http://groups.msn.com/GuitarPage/homepage.msnw

[Jolly McJollyson]

That's better, no more of this ridiculous spamming. Include a link in your signature, perhaps? That way you don't have to type the link twice. Yay, the spamming has ended!