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Chromatic Scale - Chromaticism Tutorial

A free video tutorial from Michael Palmisano
Award Winning GIT Grad, Guitargate CEO, 20yr Working Pro.
Rating: 4.6 out of 5Instructor rating
3 courses
120,778 students
Chromatic Scale - Chromaticism

Lecture description

The chromatic scale is simply every available note. Don't worry about learning all five patterns of the chromatic scale. That's not necessary. The point of this "scale" is to achieve the sound of chromaticism.

This sound is ultra useful in many scenarios. Chromaticism is often used to sound "outside" without actually playing a specifc outside sounding scale.

An easy way to illustrate this is by grabbing a scale pattern you already know - A major for example - and playing all around that shape either a half step above or a half-step below and listen to the sound you hear. It's extremely cool.

Mess around with the notes "around" your chosen scale and see how they color your playing. I personally love the chromatic sound and use it all the time. Get comfortable with the idea that your scale patterns are "loose" and there can be quite a lot of play in them.

Refer back to these jamtracks:

1. A Major - I - IV - V

2. F Major - Ima7 - IVma7 - V7

3. Slow Blues in G

Learn more from the full course

The Professional Guitar Masterclass

Learn The Tools Used By The World's Top Professional Guitar Players.

07:26:47 of on-demand video • Updated August 2017

Develop your own unique voice on the guitar
Understand and APPLY music theory
Play any chord anywhere on the neck
Understand the function of chords in progressions
Know how to analyze and interpret chord movement
Immediately know what scales to play
Visualize the whole neck in a specific key
Understand and internalize the function and sounds of different scales
Understand the difference between key center, chord scale, and chord tone approaches
Understand the CAGED System
Play all diatonic and common non-diatonic scales anywhere on the neck
Understand the available tonal options when improvising
Analyze and solve advanced chord functions
English [Auto]
Chromaticism the chromatic scale. What does that mean it just means every single note the whole thing the whole gamut. It just basically means you can play any note at any time. All whatever and you get that chromatic sound you know that that's chromaticism right. So you know people call it the chromatic scale and I guess I could show you all five patterns of the chromatic scale but it's just every single note. So I'm not going to do that. The main point of chromaticism is to give it that sound you know that bawling or that or the flying up kind of sound. It's a very easy way to create tension and dissonance by playing a lot of things in passing. So like a lot of times when you play a blues you know you'll be in for my willingness and I might just walk up to it you know. You know you just add those little notes in passing you keep going it adds that chromatic movement that chromaticism the other cool thing to do is if you want to play outside but you're not trying to think or you don't know or you just want to you know you just want to do this chromatic kind of feeling is to take a scale you know even something simple just like a regular major scale and you have your shape. And then you play kind of outside. You'll have to follow or half step behind each one of those chord tones. It creates that chromatic outside sound. So what we're going to do is we're experiment with just exactly that. I'm going to do a one for five and I'm going to do it. So I'm going to be major major and then I'm going to $5 right. So over each one I'm going to take I'm going to take a scale and I'm going to kind of mess around with some chord tones. Play has to half step below it kind of give you the idea of what it's like to kind of play you know with a chromatic kind of feel to it. So here we go. Have fun with it.
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