Chromaticism Pt 1 Approach Notes

In common music parlance, chromatic notes are ‘non-scale’ notes, the word ‘chroma’ being the Greek for colour. Certainly, chromatic notes are a great way of making your lead lines stand out.

So, whether thinking in terms of painting pictures or creating flavours, chromatic notes will add colour and spice to your playing, providing you with nearly twice as many notes (12 notes in each octave instead of seven) for using to improvise over each chord. Crucially, they provide us with the opportunity to use tension (dissonance) and then resolve it (consonance), rather than just dwelling on consonant notes all the time.

“IN COMMON MUSIC PARLANCE, CHROMATIC NOTES ARE ‘NON-SCALE’ NOTES, THE WORD ‘CHROMA’ BEING THE GREEK FOR COLOUR”

Theoretically, each time you use a chromatic note, it could be argued that you are implying a different harmony for that moment. For example, when a G# note is followed by an A note over an A7 chord, one could view the G# as being the Major 3rd of an implied E7 chord leading back to the root (A) of the