Hey Friend,

Happy Friday! Hope you had a good week. 

Remember the chromatic scale? 

That’s the one where you play each consecutive fret as you move up or down the notes - half-step intervals the whole way. This is like THE most basic pattern you can find on guitar.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t typically think about this scale as much more than a warm-up exercise for my fingers.

You know, play four frets, one with each finger, then start over on the next string at the same location. Just a really simple scale, but not very musical…

Except when it is.

You see, lead guitar players can (and do) slip little chromatic runs into their solos any time they want to make your ears take notice.

The reason these notes make the riff interesting is that they occur outside the key that the song is written in.

Take a look. Here’s the C major scale:

Following the major scale pattern, there's a whole step between C and D, a whole step between D and E, and a half step between E and F.

F to G is a whole step, G to A and A to B are also whole steps. Then we’ve come back to C, which is a half step above B.

The Major Scale Pattern:

Now let’s say you’re soloing in the key of C and you want to throw in one of these chromatic riffs. You might decide to do something like this:

That gives a nice little run up from E to B. It's a great way to build tension in a musical phrase.

You can play an ascending chromatic run if you are creating a feeling of anticipation, or you can take a descending chromatic run to bring the mood to a more melancholy feel.

And this idea of chromatic patterns doesn’t just apply to melody - we can use them in chord progressions as well.

Maybe you never gave much thought to the notes being played, but take a little time to think about songs where you’ve might have heard a chromatic run. 

There’s some great examples of chromatic riffs in Rock music. I’ll get some tabs put together to demonstrate famous songs that use these patterns. Watch for them in your mailbox Sunday!

Peace~

Dave