Hi...Ive wondering a while about this:

Wouldnt it be enough to say a song is written in major, natural minor, harmonic minor or whatever key instead of concreting for exemple Gharminicminor?
I mean...Aharmonicminor,Bharmonicminor...all sound the same except in different pitch. A song written in A minor played in Bminor would be same son so why concreting?

Another question is about chromatism or however its called playing nother that dont belong to the key. Hows that done? For exemple in one of my fav songs, the 5th Paganini caprice, theres a passage where every note of the chromatic scale is played, and it actually sounds very good...
Hows that possible being the song written in A minor?

Sry for noobie questions :lol:

1- Nope cause when I say it was made using harmonic minor I'm telling which scale I used.When I say I made a song in A minor I'm telling about its chords,its harmony.
If I say I used harmonic minor it means my lead follows that scale.You can use a lot of different scales over a major or minor harmony but if you say it's A harmonic minor it means the majority of your lead and harmony are in that scale.
Well at least in my country we say this way.

2- There are no rules for chromatic notes.Play them,if they sound cool it's cool.I never follow scales,I just pick a scale I want to work on and in the middle of my leads I always play wrong notes or notes outside of that scale to see if they add something to my melody.There are no rules in music,it's theory not rules,if something is completely out of the theory BUT it sounds good to you,it's right. ;)

Regarding chromatics. The chromatic notes i.e. the ones not in the key that you are using, are usually passing tones - notes leading to chord tones, with the chord tones on the strong beats.

Yeah HK, I think I use a technique as well where I use a passing note to get my picking back in sync, it's not stictly in the scale I'm playing but you can use those to bail you out sometimes.

But if I played the same song with every note 1 semitone lower it would be the same song, except it would be in G#harmonicminor, isnt it?

With chord tones you mean the tonic, modal and dominant of the key, ie the I, III and V grades, no?

Why do you need it to be a passing note for that purpose?

Passing notes can be used to add colour to your scales they also can help you economise various ways of picking through scales/runs etc.

Check out these vids:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qrvf0GSWuBA

Frank Gambale in this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJRZE6M_Y-M&feature=related

A very important point was made by Treva in a previous post here. Play what sounds good to your ear dude.

Marty Friedman does this passing note thing A LOT. Although, he uses it more to bend an out of key note in key.

Yep.

Thx IbanezDaemon, that video was very helpful. Strangely, I was able to catch everything he was saying.
Ok I guess I shoul try to be more spontaneous or hoever its called. But every time I play something out of key sounds terrible for some reason :lol:

Very intresting. I'd like to point that you have to think very well about timing when playing those notes: if you play one during strong beats, it could make a non intended tension or sound like a mistake (or be nice).

Chromatic notes are fun: they don't fit good enough with any single theory.

I try using passing notes, or notes which are in other scales, often when improvising or to arrange melodies.

They sound very nice with a blues setting.