hey there,

I'm working on my alternate picking at the moment. I've been doing verticle scales both 3nps and 2nps for a long time now, every day for over 6 months. I was wondering if it is more beneficial to do chromatic exercises, such as in the steve vai workouts, so that you practice every finger patern rather than just the ones that crop up in the scales you're playing. Would this kind of approach help me build speed and fluidity more than running through scales? I was also going to apply this technique of chromatic exercise to string skipping as that is something I'm particularly bad at, is that a good idea or should I stick with scales?

<wrong board me thinks >

Well i do both; i do try to practice as many things as possible and find chromatic stuff quite useful, i also use it as part of my warm up after doing various chord shapes ill slowly do the chromatic scale.

heres an E chromatic scale (starts and ends on E)



and also an exercise petrucci uses to teach speed building.



Hope that helps a bit

Well, my daily routine as a warm up is to do one combination of chromatics.

like this:

1-2-3-4
1-2-4-3
1-3-2-4 and so on and so on.

Every day I do one combination.

After a while a go through every combo on one string, then I do it on 2 strings, liek this

1--------
--2-3-4

1-------
--2-4-3 and so on...

and when i go through every combo on 2 strings there is 3 and 4 strings, and string skipping combinations as well.... plenty of material to last for years.

Those are nice combinations Ivan,specially including skipping,thanks fro sharing ideas!

No problem Muris, glad to help.