Rusty Cooley: premier guitar legato exercises

Hey, welcome back for another dose of guitar insanity. This month we are going to be to looking at some basic legato development in a one octave A Natural Minor scale. Am consists of A, B, C, D, E, F and G, resolving again to A. For those of you who might be new to the legato concept, think of a violinist playing a long string of notes without changing the bowing direction; for guitar it’s a fancy way of saying hammer-ons and pull-offs. By definition a hammer-on is when you have two or more notes on a string and you pick the first note and then hammer-on to the next note or notes just using the strength of you fingers to sound them, or “hammering” them “on.” A pull-off is kind of the opposite; you pick the highest of the two or more notes and, using a downward pulling or plucking motion, you “pull” your fingers “off” to sound the lower notes. Now, when I play these examples I only pick the first note of the ascending string and play 100% legato on the descending line— that means I don’t pick at all as I descend. As I descend I do what is called a hammeron from nowhere and use the strength of my finger to sound the first note of each descending string instead of picking, which gives it a purer legato sound.

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