Legato

What it’s for

Legato means “tied” in Italian. On guitar, it means playing as many notes as you can with your fretting hand alone: one pick stroke per string, then hammer-ons going up, pull-offs going down, sometimes a slide to shift position. Your picking hand barely gets involved anymore.

You hear the result right away: the notes flow into each other with no attack, like a saxophone or a violin, with a round, liquid sound. At the other end, alternate picking attacks every note and sounds more percussive. Legato is the sound of Joe Satriani and of fusion players like Allan Holdsworth, who made it his whole language. You also hear it from rock and metal players for fast runs, and in the blues, whenever a hammer-on follows a pull-off.

How to do it

Here’s the move from the example at the top of the page, on the high E string: 5h7h8, one pick stroke and two hammer-ons.

1. Pick only the first note on the string, the 5th fret, with your index.
2. Hammer the 7th fret with your ring finger, then the 8th with your pinky, with your fingertips, right behind the fret wire. Your index stays down.
3. To come back down, pull instead of lifting: each departing finger plucks the string toward the floor, and the note below, already held, starts to ring.
4. Even out the volume. That’s the whole secret of legato: the slurred notes have to sound as loud as the picked one. Pick a little softer, hammer a little harder.
5. Mute the strings you’re not playing, with the edge of your picking hand on the low strings and the underside of your index on the high strings: with so few pick strokes, they start ringing on their own.

In tab, legato is written with the slur symbols: 5h7h8p7p5 reads “pick the 5th fret, hammer on to the 7th and then the 8th, pull off to the 7th and then the 5th.” In standard notation, one arc connects all the notes played from a single pick stroke.

Examples

The example at the top of the page, in slow triplets: three notes per string in the A natural minor scale. On the high E, one pick stroke and two hammer-ons (5h7h8), then one pick stroke and two pull-offs (8p7p5); the same on the B string (5h6h8, 8p6p5) and on the G string (4h5h7, 7p5p4); and you finish on the A on the D string.

Here, the scale climbs from the A string to the high E and comes back down, three notes per string, but in sixteenth notes: four notes per beat. So the groups of three straddle the beats, and the first note on each string no longer falls on the click. Keep the metronome in your ear, not the pick stroke.

e|-------------------------5h7h8-8p7p5---------------|
B|-------------------5h6h8-------------8p6p5---------|
G|-------------4h5h7-------------------------7p5p4---|
D|-------3h5h7-------------------------------------7-|
A|-3h5h7---------------------------------------------|
E|---------------------------------------------------|

Six notes per beat, two strings per beat: the A minor scale comes down in pairs of strings (high E and B, then B and G, then G and D…), all the way to the low E, and settles on the A at the 5th fret. On the low strings, the four-fret stretches (3-5-7) need a well-placed index.

e|-8p7p5----------------------------------------------------------|
B|-------8p6p5-8p6p5----------------------------------------------|
G|-------------------7p5p4-7p5p4----------------------------------|
D|-------------------------------7p5p3-7p5p3----------------------|
A|-------------------------------------------7p5p3-7p5p3----------|
E|-------------------------------------------------------7p5p3-5~-|

Licks

A rock lick in E minor, in 12th position: on each string, one pick stroke, a hammer-on and a pull-off (12h15p12 on the high E and B, 12h14p12 after that), then one note on the next string. The pattern works down all six strings and lands on the low E.

e|-12h15p12--------------------------------------------------------|
B|----------15-12h15p12--------------------------------------------|
G|----------------------14-12h14p12--------------------------------|
D|----------------------------------14-12h14p12--------------------|
A|----------------------------------------------14-12h14p12--------|
E|----------------------------------------------------------15-12~-|

A jazz lick, fusion style, in the A Dorian mode: three notes per string going up, then a run down that slips by half steps (G, F♯, F, E, D, C♯, C, B) before landing on A. The last four notes on the G string come from a single pick stroke.

e|-------------5h7h8-8p7p5-------------------|
B|-------5h7h8-------------8p7p6-5-----------|
G|-4h5h7---------------------------7p6p5p4---|
D|-----------------------------------------7-|
A|-------------------------------------------|
E|-------------------------------------------|

A metal lick in E minor: the open high E string works as a pedal tone. Pick the open string, then your fretting hand hammers and pulls a three-note pattern, higher and higher up the neck, before coming back down.

e|-0h7h8p7-0h8h10p8-0h10h12p10-0h12h15p12-0h15h17p15-0h12h15p12-0h10h12p10-12~-|
B|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
G|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
D|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
A|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|
E|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Practice routine

On a single string, the high E: 5h7h8p7p5, looped, with a pick stroke every time you come back to the 5th fret.

• Start at 60 bpm, in triplets (three notes per click): the pick stroke on the click, the other two notes from your fretting hand.
• Go up 5 bpm once you can play for a full minute without the slurred notes getting quieter.
• Goal: 100 bpm in triplets. Then switch strings, and move on to the three strings of the example at the top of the page.

Next, the intermediate example: start at 60 bpm in sixteenth notes and work up to 83 bpm, its full speed. Record yourself: if one note in three jumps out, your pick stroke is too strong compared to the slurs.

Common mistakes

Variations

Two notes per string. In the pentatonic scale, each string only has two notes: legato becomes a string of hammer-ons going up and pull-offs going down, one pick stroke per string.

No pick strokes at all. To change strings, the first finger hammers the new string without the pick: that’s the hammer-on “from nowhere.” Your picking hand is only there to mute.

With slides. A slide in the middle of a group (5h7h8/10) carries your hand to another position without a new pick stroke.

With tapping. The first note of a group is hammered by a picking-hand finger: that’s tapping, two-handed legato.

Looped on two notes. Very fast hammer-ons and pull-offs on the same two frets: that’s the trill.

Acoustic or electric

On an electric guitar, legato is much easier: light strings take a hammer-on with no effort, and distortion keeps every slurred note ringing. But it also hides the flaws: practice with a clean tone first. If it’s even when clean, it’ll be perfect with distortion.

On an acoustic, the strings are stiffer and slurred notes die out fast: legato stays an embellishment there, over two or three notes, often around the open strings. On a classical guitar, slurs (“ligados”) are a core technique, but you only slur a few notes at a time.

Going further

• The course lesson: Legato, then A technical étude to mix it with other techniques.
• The two basic moves: the hammer-on and the pull-off.
• Two-handed legato: tapping, and its lesson Tapping.
• The opposite technique, one pick stroke per note: alternate picking.