I wanna get better at legato playin

[wbreslin951]

yo.. help me lol what are some good excercised for legato style playing? sweeps and such..

[nickysplendid]

hiya,

I "aquired" a download of the richie kotzen hot licks or star licks vid of t'internet a few years back. He was quite young at the time of this tuitional vid - and he had some great legato runs and things.
worth a look.
i also find that with the right tone/gain - legato can be made very very easy.
a nice touch sensitive nuno sort of sound really helps.

[Freedom777]

Tony MacAlpine also covers legato playing in a couple of his videos - their titles escape me, but any of the fusion players you can scoop some knowledge from will certainly help - another one Frank Gambale - the king of sweep. His video will almost have you give up music altogether !! Check it out online in a video search.

[chaos731]

Originally Posted by Freedom777

Tony MacAlpine also covers legato playing in a couple of his videos - their titles escape me, but any of the fusion players you can scoop some knowledge from will certainly help - another one Frank Gambale - the king of sweep. His video will almost have you give up music altogether !! Check it out online in a video search.

That Frank Gambale video is awesome (if really incredibly dated...that man should be taken out behind a barn and shot for wearing those clothes).
There is one very important caveat emptor surrounding that vid, however. The technique he uses is HIGHLY PROPRIETARY. Nobody sweeps like he does. It's a great technique, and it IS accessible, but once you get really deep into that style, it's very, very difficult to get back in the groove of "standard" sweep picking, or even alternate and hybrid picking.
Gamble even pretty much tells you as much in the video itself. The thing is, though, it's such a fluid, beautiful technique that it SOUNDS like legato playing, even though it's not, technically speaking. You're right, this is not a standard video. It will discourage all but the hardiest of players beyond belief. He just makes it look WAAAAAY too easy. He's so laid back about it, he looks almost bored. When he goes "ok, so now let's play it up to tempo", and he rips through approximately 6.5 billion perfectly and beautifully executed notes in about two seconds, it makes you want to look down at your guitar and sigh in frustration. Just goes to show, now matter how good you are, there's always someone better than you.

Curse you and your absolutely flawless technique, Mr. Gambale!

[HeavyMetal4Ever]

Play all the scales and exercises you know in all positions all over the neck with legato, then repeat until you are satisfied with your technique.

Don't expect to be Joe Satriani overnight, just keep practicing. A good way to judge your progress is to record your practice sessions. Wait a few weeks and compare your current efforts with your older practice sessions.

Another important factor in good legato technique is to stay relaxed. If you find yourself tensing up, slow down and concentrate on keeping your notes smooth and clean.

Hope this helps you on your quest for legato excellence.

Rock on!

[Wild_Child]

A good excercise to build up the strength in your fingers is to do trills.

Do them in any finger combination, up and down the neck and across all the strings. 3rd and 4th finger trills are a killer!

But remember: BE CAREFUL. If it starts to hurt, stop! You don't want to do yourself an injury.

[Drew]

Sweeps aren't really a legato technique, dude...

Start with what Wild Child said, and just do trills between each possible set of fingers. Focus initially on making them smooth and even, and playing with a light-ish touch; speed will come later.

Here's something I like to practice, to help with your 3-note-per-string patterns:

|-------3-4-6-4-3-----|-------3-5-6-5-3-----|-------3-5-6-5-3-----|
|-3-4-6-----------6-4-|-3-4-6-----------6-4-|-3-5-6-----------6-5-|



|-------3-5-7-5-3-----|-------3-5-7-5-3-----|-------4-5-7-5-4-----|
|-3-5-6-----------6-5-|-3-5-7-----------7-5-|-3-5-7-----------7-5-|

Basically, you're moving one note up one fret each pattern - do them each 4x or something to start. After the last pattern, the logical next note in the trend is to move the 3rd fret note up to the 4th, which brings you back to the first position, just up one fret.

If you'll notice, this is basically every single possible two-string pairing for 3-note-per-string diatonic scale patterns, which makes it an excersize that actually has musical applicability, too.