Guitar Speed Exercise No. 2

Guitar Speed Training


One of the best exercises for obtaining a clean style, is to use the chromatic scale as a training tool. What I like about this scale is the fact that you can customize it. In actual fact, any exercise, scale or mode that you practice with, can be customized in many, many ways.

The best advice that I can give to any guitarist who is serious about becoming efficient with their picking, is to think of ways that you can trick your fingers. More specifically, find ways that you can invert a pattern.

By inverting patterns and reconstructing them, we can accomplish three things.



1. It opens up our mind and new possibilities make themselves
visually present on the fret board.



2. Your fretting hand is constantly being renewed and challenged.



3. Your picking hand is consistently being presented with
changes in the picking motions.



To give you a good example of how you can modify exercises to your own liking, and to keep your fingers guessing, the next few posts will show you modified versions of the chromatic scale. In all reality, I could write this blog for the next ten years, posting every day, showing you nothing but variations of the chromatic scale, alone. The same goes for ANY technique builing method.

Without further a due, the first structure of the chromatic scale.



e|----------------------------
b|----------------------------
g|----------------------------
d|-------------------1-2-3-4--
a|----------1-2-3-4-----------
e|-1-2-3-4--------------------


-------------------1-2-3-4--|
----------1-2-3-4-----------|
-1-2-3-4--------------------|
----------------------------|
----------------------------|
----------------------------|




Its very simple. First finger, second finger, third finger and forth. Using alternate picking (down, up), practice it going up
and then coming back down.