Wednesday 14 January 2015

Chromatics Day 3

The previous exercise used rhythmic displacement to add interest. For this installment we'll be using octave displacement. 

Simply put this is just a chromatic scale but every note is in a different octave from the previous one. Obviously this results in some technical challenges and obscures the sound of the chromatic scale. 
 What you end up with is actually a tone row of sorts as described by serialist music theory. Here's a link if you're interested in finding out more.

To deal with the large intervallic leaps I used hybrid picking technique. I found myself using all my right hand fingers to pull it off. It makes for an excellent right hand exercise. 

In the spirit of serialist compositional technique you could also play it in retrograde. In other words, backwards. 

There many other possible configurations of this exercise so it's worth spending time working them out. It will develop your fretboard awareness and open things up when improvising. Guitarist's tend to play few wide intervals and this is a good way to start think 'bigger'. You could also apply the same concept to 7 note scale within a diatonic framework.




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