A Twist On The Chromatic Exercise
The concept of these chromatic exercises is to vary the rhythms. This is a unique concept that has become one of my most popular exercises.
I came up with this when I was studying guitar at college and saw all drummers practice something called rudiments. In total, there are 66 variations. Here in step 1, you get the first 6.
Exercise 1 has a straight 8th note pattern (8 notes in one bar of 4/4). Aim to reach a BPM of at least 120.
Exercise 2 is based on a straight 16th-note pattern (16 notes in a bar of 4/4). This is the exercise you’ll keep coming back to in order to measure your overall development.
Exercise 3 uses an 8th-note triplet pattern (3 notes per beat). The first thing you’ll notice when you play it is that the downbeat is no longer synchronized with your index finger. This, in itself, will greatly improve your left and right-hand coordination.
Keep practising the last two exercises until they reach 70-90 BPM (use this metronome).
Put into a daily routine, these exercises will seriously improve any guitarist:
- Accuracy
- Speed
- Right and left-hand coordination
- Rhythmical awareness
- Timing
In the beginner acoustic guitar course, we develop these exercises further by combining the three rhythms, playing on string pairs, and even string skipping.
Written on a single line, just as rhythms, the exercises look like this.
Sweeping Exercises
The same concept of varying the rhythm for the chromatic exercise can be applied to the sweeping exercise.
Simply play it using 8th notes, 16th notes, and triplets.
In the beginner course, we practice this before we play Time Of Your Life since that song has a sweeping pattern played fast.
If you want to turn these into a daily routine, stick with these first six until they all feel comfortable, then move on to the next step and discover how to play fast.
Chromatic Guitar Lessons | Related Pages
Chromatic & Sweeping | Step-by-step guitar course
The chromatic and sweeping exercises will sort out any problems you have with synchronizing your left and right hand as you play with a pick.
Take the Chromatic & Sweeping Course and you’ll will improve your accuracy, build speed, as well as train you in reading rhythms better.
Metronome
Spytunes Tap Tempo Metronome can help you when practising songs and exercises by getting yourself organized.
Manually enter the tempo or simply tap it in. You can also add accents, helping you learn complicated rhythmical patterns.
Time Of Your Life | Chords + Lyrics
You can learn how to play Time Of Your Life by Green Day using chords, lyrics, TAB, chord analysis, and Spytunes video guitar lessons.
| G5 | Cadd9 D5 |
Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road…
About me | Dan Lundholm
This was a guitar lesson about chromatic and sweeping exercises, by Dan Lundholm. Discover more about him and learn guitar with Spytunes.
Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not practising scales, and studying theory in isolation.