Guitar Finger Gymnastics Legato

Legato playing is simply sounding notes without picking them. There are several ways of doing this. The most common is hammering on or pulling off from another note. So, for instance, one way that many legato players approach a 3-on-a-string scale is by picking the first note and hammering on or pulling off the next two notes; or picking the first 2 notes, and either hammering on or pulling off the 3rd note. (Guitar ace Jason Becker often did that.) But there are other legato players who are able to sound every note independently without using hammer-ons or pull-offs. Allan Holdsworth, Tom Quayle, Per Nilsson, and Josh Meader can all improv without using their right hand much at all. This allows them to play figures at speeds that would be simply impossible using traditional picking techniques alone.

This exercise will help you to develop legato technique. You will only pick the first note of each pattern. So,in this exercise, you will only pick the underlined notes – 12131413, 2324, 3432. Try to keep it in perfect time, and try to keep all notes even in their attack. Don’t allow the picked notes to sound out more than the other notes. After each sequence, you’ll ascend chromatically up to the octave, then switch string sets and descend. You’ll do this for all strings.