How would you approach this chromaticism

[pastomike65]

hey I been practicing some crosspicking and to my surprise it hasn’t been extremely difficult (of course at 130/140 bpms, still working on speeding this up) however I find this line really difficult to play because of the chromatics in it, I just can’t figure how to play them at a medium fast tempo, and I keep wondering how would I even play them at a faster tempo. I hope you guys can help me with this because it has been a drag for the past 3 days

E|--------------------3–6--5–4--3–2--1-----------------------------
B|–4--------3-----4-----------------------3----------------------------
G|--------3-----5-----------------------------2–3-----------1–3-----
D|-----5--------------------------------------------1–3--4-------------
A|-------------------------------------------------------------------------
E|-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’m currently approaching this starting on the 6th ft with my 4th finger then switching to my 3rd finger on the 5th ft and then switch to the 4th ft with my 2nd finger then slide to the 3rd ft and switch to the 1st finger on the 2nd ft and a slide to the 1st ft
Another approach that I been trying is the classic spider starting with the 4th finger down to the 1st finger and then do a double slide on the 3rd ft to the 2nd ft to the 1st ft but non of this feels comfortable at all

hope you can share with me how would you guys approach this

[JakeEstner]

hey @pastomike65

in this image the top line is what i think you notated there. What is the rhythm of the line? What beat does it start on? are they 8ths, 16ths, ?

the second line is the fingering i find easiest, and the third line is a fingering I think is totally workable, although just a smidgen trickier.

YMMV, but I think the two fingerings I wrote out are totally playable and workable at very fast tempos

edited to add: ironically, these two refingerings are very workable with normal two way pick slanting

[pastomike65]

yeah my bad they are 16ths, really like the second one feels comfortable and much easier, but I’m trying to get under my fingers this exercises and it is in the first position so I was wondering, you think that doing the slide from the 3rd ft to the 1st ft will feel comfortable at higher speed, say 170 bpms? as you can see sliding with chromatic is my weakness. I will also add that doing the line by itself I can kind of handle it but whenever I try to connect those 6 bars that specific line falls apart and is not clean at all

btw here they are noted as straight 8th notes and the tempo is suppose to be 240

[JakeEstner]

oh, if you want to do it in first position, I would definitely do the ‘6-5-4-3-2-1’ par5 as fingers 4 4 3 2 1 1, as below

Also in that 654321 line it would be a bit easier (and imo sound better) to do a slide either from 6th to 5th fret or from 2nd to 1st fret and not pick the note, just let the slide slur it out

anyway, my fingering for keeping it mostly in first position attached

edit: personally I wouldn’t want to do it with the 3/3/2/2 fingering if I didn’t have to, but I can easily see that being workable - not a particular move I have practiced. I usually do the shifting slide thing with first or fourth finger

[Ernest_W_Retallack]

Pat Martino, Linear Expressions!

[pastomike65]

definitely slurs work better, thx for the help haha I was so numb trying to do it as it was notated that i completely forgot about slurs

[JakeEstner]

Yeah, and if it’s Martino he does slur a bit, not a ton, but the right placed slurs can really help you get out of a jam with this kind of stuff. Edit: good to note that in this style, often the slurs are on downbeats, so maintain some upbeat accents. Not always, just more often than not.

[pastomike65]

yeah there’s so much you can squeeze from those studies this is the third time I revisit them