Chromatic rolling sixes - lift index finger or keep planted?

Playing Technique
#1

When playing a chromatic sixes exercise like this one:

—2—3—4—5—4—3—2—3-–4–-5-–4-–3— [etc, etc…]

I have a natural tendency to lift my index finger off the 2nd fret as I’m playing the subsequent ascending notes, and then don’t plant it again until I’ve descended back down to the 1st note.

Logic dictates that, at least with a rudimentary repeating exercise like this, keeping the index finger planted on the 2nd fret would be the more efficient movement. There’s literally no good reason to ever lift it.

However, I find it far more difficult to keep it planted. Lifting it feels more natural and I can actually play the phrase much faster/cleaner by lifting my index finger.

Should I just do what feels more natural for me (lifting it), or instead work on keeping it planted?

EDIT: In fact, I just noticed that I’m actually lifting every one of my fingers after I play a note when, again, it seems like it would be more efficient to keep them planted until lifting is actually necessary. Thoughts?

#2

The simplest possible answer without looking at a video is:

Test the different options and evaluate results :slight_smile:

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#3

I have to disagree here.

There are situational benefits to keeping a finger planted so that the lower fretted note can be “revealed” later. However, this is really only significant when the time between the two instances of the note is short, typically the duration of one or maybe two other notes. In almost any other situation, there’s usually enough time available to fret the lower note again.

If we look at the rolling chromatic pattern

|-5-6-7-8-7-6-|-5-6-7-8-7-6-|
  1 2 3 4 3 2   1

we see that the first finger has the duration of 5 notes to recuperate between fretting movements. This is far more time than necessary for recuperation. The only finger that we really need to keep planted is the third finger, as if we were to make distinct frettting actions we would only have the duration of one note between those actions.

More than that, there are plenty of very good reasons not to leave the first finger planted. Every fixed point of fretting contact with the guitar limits the freedom and mobility of the fretting hand. If you keep the first finger planted, it limits your ability to incorporate a natural “rocking” action of the fretting arm to achieve some of the fretting movement and to feel the rhythmic pulse of the pattern.

Keeping the index finger planted throughout also limits your ability to change strings between repetitions, or to apply the same digital sequence over stretchier shapes, due to the reduced mobility of the hand. More than that, keeping the index finger planted results means that there is no haptic “marker” for the fretting hand between repetitions, which limits chunking and synchronisation.

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