How Chromatic Exercises Help With Speed and Precision



A reader recently asked:

I’m wondering how the chromatic exercises help with speed and precision–especially with changing the fingering each week. For example, in recent weeks, I hit 130 BPM on both 1324 and 1243, but I’ve been on 1342 for 5 days now and haven’t been able to crack 95 BPM. What is it I’m looking for as a sign of progress if each week, I’m back to the 80 BPM drawing board?

Good question!

Exactly how you approach these exercises is going to depend on what you want to get out of them.

Whichever approach you take is going to help develop your accuracy, as you are practising an exercise with a metronome.

Developing Finger Independence

The beginner and intermediate exercises at the start of the book work on developing your finger independence, something a lot of people find challenging when starting lead guitar. Working on a new exercise every week is a great way to methodically train your fingers to be more independent with 10 minutes of practice a day.

When working through the exercises this way, you are working on a new exercise each week, as such, you cannot say “Because I reached XYZ tempo on Exercise 1 in seven days, I must reach XYZ tempo on Exercise 2 in seven days”.

Exercise 1 and 2 are different, so to say that because you reached a tempo on one, you ‘must’ reach the same tempo on the other in the same time-frame is an apples and oranges comparison - it’s a logical fallacy.

This type of thinking is a fast way to get upset with our playing and our progress!

To go back to the original question:

What is it I’m looking for as a sign of progress if each week, I’m back to the 80 BPM drawing board?

This part of the question is slightly flawed, as we just mentioned, these exercises are all different so yes we should be going back to 80bpm when we start a new one.

Imagine you were at the gym at you got 5 reps on a 100kg squat. Then you added 5kg to your bar and you ‘only’ did 3 reps. If you were to say to yourself “I didn’t hit 5 reps therefore I didn’t improve” it would be a silly conclusion to reach, right? Similar thing here.

EVERY time we change an exercise, it’s back to step 1, back to the drawing board, back to starting from scratch. Don’t get disheartened by it - when you can accept this you will find it easier to make progress.

  • This concept, how it can dishearten guitar players and the correct way to psychologically approach it is discussed extensively in How to Practice Guitar

How to Measure Progress

Having said that, we still need a way to measure progress

Going from 80bpm to 130bpm on an exercise is progress. Going from 80bpm to 95bpm is also progress! So you have made measurable progress!

Good job.

The measure for progress is where you started with a particular exercise. You CANNOT compare one exercise against another.

The particular exercise in question is a rather awkward combination of fingers, and it’s probably a combination of fingers that you rarely use when playing guitar, which is why you’re finding it so difficult.

But that’s what we expect - we expect that some of these finger combinations will be easier than others. In fact… that’s sort of the point of the book - to methodically train your fingers in every single mathematically possible combination… so that we can find weak areas and train them.

Finger Independence Practice Plan

Having said all of that, so what?

I recommend you keep working through the exercises like you are, doing one every week. You seem to be recording your metronome tempos which is excellent (the book has blank space under each exercises so you can pencil in your tempos on each page).

So I see two options here, keep working through beginner exercises and once you complete them:

  1. Move to the intermediate exercises.
  2. Go through the weaker beginner exercises and train them all up to a certain tempo… then move to the intermediate section.

So if we take 130bpm as your target tempo, then for the next few months you work through all the beginner exercises, doing one each week and record where you get to. After completing the beginner section you look back at your recorded tempos and take each exercise where you didn’t reach 130bpm and train that to 130bpm. Bear in mind that this might take you much longer than you initially expect - you may find some exercises take two or even three weeks to get to this tempo. That’s just how it goes.

But after doing that… you will have excellent finger independence.

… and you can move onto the intermediate section for the next challenge!

How to Develop Speed

The initial question also mentioned developing speed.

So how do we develop speed? In the original question the user lists his tempo improvements, which are actually pretty good (you should be happy with these improvements!) … but I assume he is not satisfied (I wasn’t satisfied with my speed until I finally hit 16 notes per second).

At this point in his playing, I recommend two things:

  1. He’s doing some regular practice everyday. Add 10 minutes to your practice time to work on the following: Only use the 1 2 3 4 exercise. Use the 2-2-2 training program (this is under the section titled ‘Practice Plans’. Work on this for 4 months.
  2. Once a week make a video of your hands when you do the 2-2-2 training program. Watch what they do. Are you making excessive or silly movements? Could you be a bit more controlled in how far the pick is moving from the string? Consciously try and improve these elements in the following week’s practice.

So overall, your chromatics practice will now look like:

  • 10mins a day working on the finger-combination-of-the-week.
  • 10mins a day working on 1 2 3 4 with the 2-2-2 training program.

Personal Help With Your Playing

If you want some personal help with your guitar playing where you get:

  • Specific practice plans
  • Direct feedback on your playing
  • Accountability

Then you can check out my guitar coaching program.