Legato
So what's Legato then? Legato quite simply means smooth. For us as guitarists this means eliminating the pick noise and attack of a picked note. So how do we do it then?
First of all, lets look at the Hammer On. The hammer on is performed by simply using one of the fingers on your left hand to whack down on the fretboard to produce a tone at the relevant fret, it is not accompanied by any picking action at all, however the note prior to the hammer on is often picked. In our first example below, we are going to pick the open string then hammer on at the second fret on the relevant strings.
Hammer On Exercise one:
You can accumulate a ferocious pace through this lick, it is a very Jimi Hendrx influenced lick and one you hear in his work often, just keep repeating it and make sure you keep it all in time!
Hammer On Exercise Two:
So here's the beloved box one pentatonic scale that will be your best friend by term three! You'll find it cropping up in a bunch of exercises over the next two terms, just due to it's usefulness. Don't worry about the theory and such of the scale yet, you'll get all that in term three. To play this exercise, get your first finger to play all the notes at fret five, then use your little finger to play fret eight and your third to play fret seven. If you keep your pick moving in one constant downward motion you can get a fair turn of speed out of this lick, try transposing the shape to different positions on the guitar neck. This one is a little harder than the first as instead of an open string being the note before the hammer on, in this circumstance we have got a fretted not as is often the way.
So what other techniques do we need to think about? Well imagine a hammer on in reverse, this is called a pull off, lets first look at some involving open strings:
Pull Off Exercise One:
So here's that minor pentatonic scale again! So how do we do this pull off stuff then? Well, on each string pick the first note, then having sounded that note literally then pull your left hand finger off the side of the sring, like you are plucking the string with your left hand, this should then sound the open string note. I find that when I'm doing pull offs, I tend to use the side of my left hand finger to sound the note I'm pulling off to, but that might be a personal thing?! Use finger two to play fret three and finger one to play fret two.
Try the above exercise at a higher fret , this is a little harder as you have to get your first finger ready for each oull off fairly quickly. I've tabbed it for you at the 12th fret just so it stays in the same key!
Pull Off Exercise Two
For this one I find the easiest way to deal with it with just my first and third fingers, the two fingers kind of crab across the strings. As always I always try and get my pick going in the direction of the next note so in this case my pick is always going up in a large sweep across the strings.
Pull Off Exercise Three
So we have had a look at pulling off one note to the next, why not make a little train of pull offs?! the below example does just that, this is quite in the style of the late great Randy Rhoads. the little threes above the stave are to tell us to play three notes in the space of the quarter note we call these triplets, count 1 trip let, 2 tri plet, 3 trip let etc etc This gives three syllable sounds to play each note to. Don't rush this it only sounds great if you can clearly hear each note.
Other ways of achieveing the legato effect include sliding from one not to another, simply fret the nirt note and keep your finger pressed against the fret board and slide along to the next.
Slide exercise
This is simply a major scale played along the G string from the A note at the second fret to the A note at the fourteenth fret. We play one note then slide to the next, we then pick that again and slide to the next one and so on all the way up the octave.
Finger strengthener!
This is a real finger strengthener exercise, We are basically fretting a note with our first finger then doing a pull off with our second finger, then our third, then our fourth, then our third, then our second! Make sense?! Have a look at the tab to make it clear, the thing that looks like a : at the end simply means repeat. Note in the video my picking hand really doesnt do anything after the first pull off.
We'll do a bunch more stuff about legato over the next few terms, mean time check out Richie kotzen's legato technique as something to aspire toward, his blazing series of hammer ons and pull offs approach a terrifying speed!