Stop 2 of 6
Advanced legato
Fluid lines with the fretting hand alone.
Loading…
Stop 2 of 6
Fluid lines with the fretting hand alone.
In sweep picking the pick did almost all the work. Now we turn that around: in advanced the fretting hand produces almost every note, with , and slides. The result is a fluid, round, almost vocal sound that can go very fast without the pick having to keep up. The difficulty lies elsewhere: making every note sound equally loud, and making sure nothing else sounds at all.
Listen to this A minor phrase. There is only one pick stroke, at the start: the rest is done by the fretting fingers, climbing the 1st string with slurs and index-finger slides.
The secret of the position shifts is the index finger: after each group, the pull-offs return to finger 1, and it is the index that slides up to the next position. That way the whole hand travels along the neck without the note being cut.
| Group | Frets | Fingers | How you shift |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 5 – 7 – 8 | 1 – 3 – 4 | — |
| 2 | 8 – 10 – 12 | 1 – 3 – 4 | the index slides from 5 to 8 |
| 3 | 12 – 13 – 15 | 1 – 2 – 4 | the index slides from 8 to 12 |
| 4 | 15 – 17 | 1 – 3 | the index slides from 12 to 15 |
The most common use of advanced legato: 3NPS scales in which only the first note on each string is picked. The other two come from hammer-ons going up and pull-offs coming down.
Watch your fretting hand as you play the ascent. On each string:
Coming down it is the other way round: all three fingers are already in place before you pick the highest note, and each pull-off tugs the string slightly towards the floor (or the ceiling), like a little pluck, rather than just lifting the finger.
What if we drop the pick from the string changes too? A sounds a note on a string that wasn't vibrating yet, using only the impact of the finger. There is no earlier note to hammer from: the finger lands on a silent string with enough energy to set it going.
Listen to the previous ascent played with no pick at all:
Coming down, every string change starts with a hammer-on from nowhere by the little or ring finger on the next lower string: that is the hardest gesture in this example.
A very musical use of the hammer-on from nowhere is the loop: a short group of notes repeated in a cycle, ideal for fast rock phrases. This one, on the A minor pentatonic, alternates pull-offs on the 1st and 2nd strings. In the tab, the 1st string is picked and the 2nd enters with a hammer-on from nowhere by the ring finger; if that's hard at first, pick it too:
Loops are deceptive: because the pattern is short, the hand tends to rush and drop the pull-off notes. Play it with the metronome and make sure the four notes of each group take up exactly the same time. When it's clean, change the starting point (begin on the second note of the group) so the accent falls on a different note: an excellent trick for not relying on a single "launch".
In legato the pick no longer mutes anything, so string noise turns up everywhere: open strings ringing in sympathy, notes that keep sounding as you change strings, hammer-on impacts waking up neighbouring strings. The answer is :
Fretting hand
Picking hand
Try this: play the previous scale with distortion (or imagine it with lots of gain) and stop dead in the middle of a string. If you hear anything other than the last note, something isn't muted. Gain is a cruel and very useful magnifying glass for legato.
The goal of legato is that nobody can tell which note was picked and which wasn't. Usually the opposite happens: the picked note is loud, the hammer-on medium and the pull-off weak. You fix it with two things: firmer fingers and a softer pick attack on the first note.
The best exercise for finger strength and independence is the trill: two notes alternated with hammer-ons and pull-offs, no pick, for a measured stretch of time.
When the 1-3 and 1-4 trills feel comfortable, try 2-3, 2-4 and 3-4: the last two are the weakest for almost every guitarist, and the ones that gain most from a little daily work.
Start the metronome and play sixteenths: four notes per beat. One 30-second set with each finger pair and 30 seconds of rest between them. If the volume of the notes drops, lower the tempo.
Goal: Four 30-second sets (1-3, 1-4, 2-4, 3-4) with every note at the same volume.
Play the A minor three-notes-per-string example with one pick stroke per string. Then, for the last two repetitions, drop the pick strokes too and use hammer-ons from nowhere on every string change.
Goal: Up and down the scale four times in a row in triplets, with the picked note no louder than the slurred ones.
Repeat the 1st-string phrase from the start of this stop. First without a metronome, checking that each index slide doesn't cut the note. Then at 50 BPM in triplets, going up 4 at a time. Play it over this backing to give it musical meaning:
Goal: Play the one-string phrase with a single pick attack and reach the final note with vibrato, without gaps.
Practice blocks ticked: 0 · Self-assessments taken: 0