Okay, so first of all, let us discuss what legato actually means and what it means to us as guitar players. What it actually means is Italian for smooth and it does not really have a specific meaning. That sort of relates to the guitar but the reason that this term has become popular is because when you use this technique, it tends to sound smoother than the regular picking style. Okay, so let me just give you a basic idea of when someone says, “Oh he was playing the legato style or it is a legato style.” What does that really mean?
Generally speaking, if you have something to just picking a lick, just a very basic lick on one string, that will be known as alternate picking because I am going down, up, down, up, down, up, or you could go up, down, up, down whichever you choose. In this case, I am going down, up and what I am doing is I am doing three notes per string. Okay, just going on the fourth, fifth, and seventh frets on the D string and just using alternate picking.
Now, if I want to play the same lick in the legato style, what I will do is I will only pick the first note or later on, as we get better at the technique, I will only be picking the first note. So let me just give you a basic explanation of what I am talking about so I am going to pick the first note then the second two notes in the lick. They are not going to be picked. They are going to be hammered on with my fingers. In this case, it is going to be first finger on that fourth fret and then the second and fourth on the fifth and seventh frets.
Now, I am going to discuss how we can sort of reach this level of technique in a moment. But just to give you another idea, what you can do is what some people call the hammer on from nowhere. You do not even need to pick the first note then but generally, I do. The reason for this is because it keeps the lick a little bit cleaner. I just mean that you can.
Now, you need to have some palm meeting with right hand as well. And, the way to do that is to put the fleshy part of your palm on the guitar. If you ever worry about where you should lay your palm, the best thing to do is depending on the top of bridge, you have run it along the bridge. When you find it, using too much movement forward or back so you get the desired amount of palm, you will find that the tune. It will stop you moving back anyway so you kind of want to be able to go any further and I normally find that is about right.
And as I have explained, if you have seen in my DVDs, we talked about muting techniques. The palm here will mute what is behind my lick. When I say behind, if I am playing this D string, it will be muting the A and E strings. What normally happens is, on the side of the first finger, it will also mute the top strings and sometimes the pinky as well and the finger will mute there. Another, as you move to the finish strings, this palm will be doing more work. Okay, so that is again the basic idea of what the technique is. They have to do the muting. Now, before we get into shapes, you know what shapes we can use for this technique.
Let us look at a way to build up a technique and get it nice and smooth. Now, the problem is that our fingers have different sizes and therefore have different strengths. You know, your pinky is not going to be as strong as your first finger and your second finger is probably a little bit stronger than that because obviously, it depends. But definitely, the pinky is normally the weak one. So the first thing that we have to take into account is that we are not going to pick very loud because what you do not want is this going on.
If we are going to pick that first note – and a lot of times, you will be doing that – we want to make sure that that pick note is quite okay or not really kind of attacking it too much. So that it will be the same volume as the other note because the other notes are not going to have the advantage of being picked. So what I do is just make sure that I am picking quite nice and quietly.
Now you probably noticed when I am doing this type of lick, I do not leave my first finger down
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services