Toby Pitman continues his series of premium guitar tuts, showing you how to incorporate the Chromatic scale into your lead breaks. Grab this tut today and start to fill in some of the gaps in your lead work! Tabs and a loop to play along with are included.
In this guitar tutorial I’m going to give you an insight into how you can incorporate the Chromatic scale into your playing. Using Chromatic sounding runs can really add interest and a bit of spice to you playing.
We’ll start by having a look at how the chromatic scale works and then look at the concept of passing notes. If your a fan of rock guitar then this tutorial should help you (ahem).. ‘fill in some of the gaps’ in your lead work!
The Chromatic scale contains all twelve notes. That’s all the naturals and sharps and flats etc. You may associate the use of this scale with Jazz and Country styles, and even Classical (Flight Of The Bumble Bee being the most famous Chromatic composition) but there’s no reason why it can’t be use in rock styles too.
Players like Steve Morse (Ex-Dixie Dregs, Deep Purple) have been using Chromatics to great effect for years. In fact Steve Morse is a great player to check out for this kind of thing. The thing about using Chromatic notes is they break up the drudgery of just going up and down a diatonic scale which can get tonally really boring. Passing between notes helps you create more interesting contours and colors that can’t be achieved otherwise.
Table of Contents
- The Chromatic Scale
- Four Fingers Per String
- Three Fingers Per String
- The Weak Shall Inherit The Passing Tone
- Connecting The Dots
- Falling Lines
- Chromatic Runs
- Conclusion