This week we'll do a technique/style that's covered a lot on the Internet, but is always touched on very lightly. Full of musical terms and breif explanations with hardly any practical excercises in sight. The technique we're going to be covering is a favourite of musicians such as Hendrix and Satriani. This technique is legato. For those unfamiliar with the term, learn your theory!
Alright alright we'll define it here. Legato means to play smoothly, so that each note contains no pause between them. This is accomplished on a string instrument using slurs (wich we defined last week as being hammer ons and pull offs) and slides. One of the best examples of heavy use of legato on guitar is the song "Flying In a Blue Dream" by Joe Satriani. We'll start of extremely simple for the first example. We'll play the C major scale in legato.
D|-----------------9/10--
A|---------8h10h12-------
E|-8h10h12---------------
The we can go back
D|-10p9p7-------------------
A|--------10p8p7------------
E|---------------10p8p7/8---
As with any excersise play it slow and work your way up. You want each note to be smooth and clear. That's the basic idea behind legato on the guitar right there. We'll do several more excercises to get the feel of some of the things we can do. We don't have to do triplets. Here's an example of quadruplets and quintuplets:
E|--10h12p13p12p10--12h13h15h17----
- Garett Spencley (http://www.mp3.com/garett_spencley)
