Legato Playing On Guitar
Legato is a term that you will hear a lot once you start getting into lead guitar playing, but what exactly does it mean? Well, it literally means âtied togetherâ and it indicates that notes should be played smoothly, with no gap or silence between them, so that one note leads directly onto the next. The opposite of âstaccatoâ, whereby the notes are played abruptly and percussively, legato gives a smooth, flowing sound to the music.Â
On every instrument this is achieved in different ways. On a woodwind instrument, for example, the notes would all be played under one breath. On a violin they would be played on a single bow stroke. On the guitar legato is achieved by minimizing (or doing away with altogether) picking. This means using âhammer-onsâ and âpull-offsâ, and when talking about guitar technique this is precisely what is meant by legato. Legato technique can therefore be broken down into these two actions â when ascending using hammer-ons, and when descending using pull-offs. These two closely related techniques can easily be combined to produce smooth, flowing melodic lines, often played at quite impressive speeds. Letâs start off then by looking at hammer-ons. Hammer-ons are used to go from one note to a higher note on the same string without picking the new note. You play the first note by picking it, then to play the second note, rather than using the pick to make it sound, you âhammer-onâ with your fretting finger. So for example, suppose you are playing the note E on the fifth fret of the B string with your first finger, and the next note you want to play is an F# two frets above. What you do is bring the tip of your third finger down, fast and hard, on to the string at the seventh fret to produce the note. You need to come down on the string perpendicular to the fretboard, and with enough force to produce the same volume, more or less, that you would with a pick. Thatâs about all you need to know about hammer-ons. When you want to descend to a lower note on the same string you need to use a pull-off. Many people think that a pull-off is simply a hammer-on in reverse, but there is slightly more to it than that, and this is where a lot of beginners go wrong. If you simply lift your finger off the string, in the opposite manner to a hammer-on, you wonât produce adequate volume, or you may not get any sound at all. Your âpull-offâ finger needs to really âpluckâ the string, downwards towards the floor, in order to get the note to sound. So for example, if you play the note F# with your third finger on the seventh fret of the B string, and you then want to play the note E on the fifth fret of the same string, you firstly need to make sure that your first finger is already fretting that note on the fifth fret. Then you need to âpluckâ, or âpull-offâ with your third finger in order to sound the note on the fifth fret. If you donât pluck enough you wonât get enough volume, but if you pluck too much you can end up bending the note sharp, and it will sound horrible. You need to experiment a bit with this until you find the sweet spot.