I accidentally discovered a surprisingly good way of getting chromatic scales better today during my practice.

At grade 6 you do C, C# and D which are all fairly OK and then A which is actually (well I think so!) quite a bit harder because you go much further up into the top octave, so fingerings are more complicated and you need to keep the support whilst remembering all the fingerings and playing them smoothly etc. I've tried slow practice and "splurts" but progress was still frustratingly slow.

I was practising the lower 3 and on a whim decided to see how fast I could go... I managed 140 BPM crotchet beat (playing in quavers) which was quite a nice surprise (150 was insane and got messy ) as I could still play them at that speed. Then I randomly decided to try the grade 5 (Eb and E) and 4 (F) ones, and worked my way slowly up.

Doing a semitone at a time, each time I played a new scale I only had one more note and one more fingering to worry about. When I played a scale and it just wouldn't work at that speed I took the metronome down 5 or 10 BPM, then if it seemed easy there worked my way back up.

The upshot is by the time I got to the chromatic on A, I found I could play it fluently at 105 BPM: may not sound that impressive compared with 140, but the last time I practised that scale I only got it from 75 to 77! (I keep records so I can see at a glance which scales need the most work) 104 is the recommended minimum speed for scales at grade 6, so in one short practice session not only did I practice all the chromatic scales between C and A, but got the A scale from awfully slow up to above the minimum.

So I thought I'd share it - it seemed to work for me, hope it maybe helps someone else

That's a good idea, I'll try that! I have to be able to play all of them for grade 8 so it's doubly useful because I get to practise them all that way!
The metronome part doesn't work for me, I'm afraid. I absolutely loathe the things (I've dropped my flute teacher's three times - she won't let me use it any more )! The pressure would be too great and I'd totally muck up. Oh dear, sorry about that ranting!
But I'll try the starting with C and then working my way up, and see how it goes!

Gosh, and wow to you that you keep records, you must be very disciplined - that's great!

Hope it helps; yes, it's useful because you practice all of them - and of course when you're only adding one semitone each time they don't get harder as quickly as if you jump from say D to A. All you then have to sort out is the changeover at the top, because essentially you have already practised the rest of the scale. It really seemed to help! Hope it works for you

If I didn't keep records I'd end up in a huge mess - it sounds very organised, but it's just a scribbled note by the scale in the scalebook.

The metronome is good for me because I can see my progress... otherwise I'd probably try to practice the scales that I found hard at the same speed as those I know really well, and then I'd just get frustrated. But we're all different