Diatonic Exercises

[billkath]

All the books I own have diatonic chord exercises of some sort.
I was wondering-are these essential things to know? From what I understand, these exercises are good for teaching you diatonic passing chords. Are there other reasons that doing these exercise are useful?

I was thinking of learning the Major ones (5432,5321,6432, 5321,)anyway, but should I also be learning the other exercises-Harmonic and melodic minors and bebop major and minor 6, all on 6432? And if so- should I be working out the other string usuage for them myself?

And-and this is a question that I can't see answered in the books- is it the chords themselves that are important, or is the actual voicing of the chords vital? I mean-if you were doing an F major diatonic execise, on 6 4 3 2-I'd be going up from fret 1 to fret 13 and back down. When doing Ab major-would I be expected to go from fret 4 to fret 17, or would, at some point, I switch to using 5 4 3 2 or something?
Lots of questions-I'd appreciate some thoughts on the benefits of doing this.
Thanks, Peeps!

[JohnW400]

Originally Posted by billkath

All the books I own have diatonic chord exercises of some sort.
I was wondering-are these essential things to know? From what I understand, these exercises are good for teaching you diatonic passing chords. Are there other reasons that doing these exercise are useful?

I was thinking of learning the Major ones (5432,5321,6432, 5321,)anyway, but should I also be learning the other exercises-Harmonic and melodic minors and bebop major and minor 6, all on 6432? And if so- should I be working out the other string usuage for them myself?

And-and this is a question that I can't see answered in the books- is it the chords themselves that are important, or is the actual voicing of the chords vital? I mean-if you were doing an F major diatonic execise, on 6 4 3 2-I'd be going up from fret 1 to fret 13 and back down. When doing Ab major-would I be expected to go from fret 4 to fret 17, or would, at some point, I switch to using 5 4 3 2 or something?
Lots of questions-I'd appreciate some thoughts on the benefits of doing this.
Thanks, Peeps!

Regarding this point you should always find the inversion closest to the nut and start from there. The F would be root position. The Ab,... 3rd inversion.

[jsepguitar]

I think the purpose is mainly to show you chord voicings for diatonic chords on string sets, so you learn different options to play the same chord. In a real playing situation you would want to change up the voicings to employ proper voice leading, so you woundn't be using the same voicing for each chord (like R-5-7-3 for example). But showing it the way you describe makes it easier to see the similarities between major 7th, minor 7th, dominant 7th chords, etc for a given string set and voicing.

[billkath]

Originally Posted by JohnW400

Regarding this point you should always find the inversion closest to the nut and start from there. The F would be root position. The Ab,... 3rd inversion.

Thanks, John.

[billkath]

Originally Posted by jsepguitar

I think the purpose is mainly to show you chord voicings for diatonic chords on string sets, so you learn different options to play the same chord. In a real playing situation you would want to change up the voicings to employ proper voice leading, so you woundn't be using the same voicing for each chord (like R-5-7-3 for example). But showing it the way you describe makes it easier to see the similarities between major 7th, minor 7th, dominant 7th chords, etc for a given string set and voicing.

Thanks a million.