Ultimate Shred Machine: Legato Exercises & Fundamentals

1. USM Module 2: Legato Introduction & Welcome: Hi guys Chris, superhero. I'm very excited to launch my next Skillshare course, all about mastering the legato technique. In this course, we'll be covering things like legato fundamentals and common issues, trying to figure out ways to make our pinky cooperate. Looking at things like classic rock legato, as well as things like oddly timed and all the group legato, are we doing role in groups of 5.7 as well as strings gets legato. So get excited guys to pick up that guitar. And let's master that legato technique. 2. USM Section 2A Legato Fundamentals & Common Issues + Ex 1 to 5: Okay guys, so the next section of the course, we're gonna be concentrating on the legato technique. So first of all, let's talk about what that essentially means. The difference between legato and staccato that we looked at in the previous chapter, is that staccato is multiple notes played back-to-back with short bursts in-between. So when we're doing the shredding, it's lots of little short notes and that will create a small separation in-between the notes. Whereas legato, the nodes all flow into each other smoothly. So often in a sort of a notated contexts, you might hear the terms tied or slurred together. If you're not familiar with what legato sounds like, he's a brief example. So as you can see when we're putting the legato technique on the guitar, it's essentially just a lot of hammer ons and pull offs. So what I wanna do is I want to talk about some of the issues that may arise in the early stages of legato playing. Okay, so I wanted to talk about some of the common problems that may occur during the initial stages of doing hemorrhoids and pull-ups. So your hammer on technique is pretty simple. We're just picking the first night and then we hammered down whatever other notes we want on that string. So if I've got a pentatonic, you're only playing one note, a string, and then the second note would be hammered on. So if I've got something that's more like a three notes per string, diatonic scale shape. I've got three notes per string, so I play the first note and then hammer on the next two. So that's all relatively easy. But once we start working backwards, something like this, There's a couple of things that can go wrong with pull-ups, mainly because a lot of people mistake pull offs with reverse hammer ons. That's when you do stuff like this. Sort of reacting to the narco, the hammer ons really reactive and that you can wait for the wrong moment and slam it down. The problem with doing it that with a pull off, because it doesn't work if we have the pointer waiting behind the pinky, if I'm doing this eight to five on the first string, what I'm actually doing with my pinky. It's picking the string. It's like I'm doing this. I'm playing the string and then I'm plucking towards the floor. So I can't be doing a reverse hammer on this way. And the other thing as well is that the hammer on goes in, the pull off, doesn't go out. If I do this, it makes it a little bit of a sand, but I'm not creating a new attack. So keep in mind that my right hand, my picking hand is not doing anything to create that extra second hand has to work twice as hard. So keep in mind that when we're doing pull offs, that we want to actually be plucking the string without fretting hand. When I'm doing something like that and I'm rolling. Notice that I'm pulling towards the floor. Not pulling out at you guys at the carer doesn't work. The other thing that we're going to want to do and keep in mind when we're doing this hammer ons and pull offs is trying to keep volume consistency. So if you're finding that you have stuff like a really strong pick note instead of a week second note, that just means that your technique needs to be worked on and strengthened out. So your endgame is that we wanna be able to have these extra picked notes with your fretting hand on the poll offs. And we want to maintain an equal volume from the pic notes to either the hammer on all or pulled off legato notes as well. The first legato exercise we'll look at is a fairly straightforward chromatic exercise. It will primarily focus on building finger independence and dexterity. And we'll use the hammer on technique across all four fingers on the fretting hand. In a similar vein to figure 2.1, we're now going to look at a chromatic exercise that is heavily focused on building finger independence and dexterity. But in this exercise, we will use the pull off technique across all four fingers on the fretting hand. This exercise uses a simple pentatonic licks and a minor ascending with the hammer on technique and descending with the pull off technique. You can even use small fragments of this exercise as a lake in improvisations or solid competition. The next exercise uses an, a dominant pentatonic, which gets used frequently in Mixolydian contexts or can be played over a dominant seventh chord will ascend and descend through this exercise using the same string crossing pattern we saw in figure 2.3. The next two notes per string exercise we'll be looking at is based off the hero Josh is scale. We can get a very Lydian E sounding two notes per string, pentatonic out of this scale, once again, will ascend and descend through this exercise using the same string crossing pattern we saw in figures 2.3 and 2.4. 3. USM Section 2B Make That Damn Pinky Cooperate + Ex 6 to 8: One of the main problems that most guitarists come across when they're starting up working there. Legato technique is how weak the pinky is. In this short lesson, we're gonna be talking about how to increase the speed and things to think about when we're using the pinky during legato. Okay, So before we dive right in, I just want to point out that in day-to-day life, you don't use your pinky very much for holding a pencil, brushing your teeth, picking up a mug. It's a very, very useless finger for a reason. We don't use it very often. So when we're trying to build up strength in these early stages, your pinky is going to feel quite useless. And I've seen a lot of guitarists just sort of go screw it. And then I'll use another finger. But there are gonna be points where the pinky is very, very useful. So if we just start with something as simple as this, the first string is good because when we pull down, we don't hit other strings. And we talked about this before, but it's particularly important with the pinky. If we lift out, I'm gonna get credit. I'm not going to create a new attack with my legato hand. So when I pull out at you guys at the camera, I've got no attack when I pulled towards the floor, I'm essentially creating a new picking sound with my fretting hand. Another important thing to do is to try and get your pinky. Used to being pulled off two different fingers because we wanna get it strong in all contexts. As a general thing, I mean, I find the hammer on situation kind of takes care of itself. If you're sort of angry enough and you want that pinky down, it's going to kind of work. The things that always seem to sort of tune pear shaped is this pulling out reverse hammer on concept? We have no attack and nurses stain and that note just disappears. So just be really wary of that. I'm pulling down motion. Try not to pull out and this strength will increase over time. The next couple of exercises we're going to be concentrating on. We're gonna be trying to build a relationship between the pinky and the other fingers. Once pinky strength is built, you'll start to realize how often you use it and how often you need it. So it can be an extremely useful tool in all of your playing, the particularly in Legato. This exercise will focus on the relationship between the pointer and the pinky, which will create a gap of two whole tones or four frets. We use Hammer runs on the descending part and pull off on the day since. The next exercise works with all four fingers and has a strong emphasis on building the Pinky's relationship with all of the other fingers. It will vary between hammer ons and pull offs and go-between pinky pointer, pinkie ring, and pinky middle. The next exercise is somewhat neoclassical and has a Malmsteen ask sound to it. It focuses more on diatonic sounding scales. We're going to play through multiple sixth note triplet phrases that all begin with the pinky in the key of a minor. 4. USM Section 2C Good Time Rock Legato + Ex 9 to 11: The next section of the course is going to be devoted to what I call good time Rob Legato. This is used by players like ice freely from case, Thin Lizzy, Kirk Hammett, Jimmy Page to name a few. And what we're basically going to be doing is working through tonight first string pentatonics, using triplets, you'll hear some familiar licks. And we're also going to work through the dominant pentatonic and also the hero Joshi scale. So the majority of these good time, predictable rock legato licks it going to sound like this or that kind of thing. So it's really, really important staple to have an airplane. The main thing is that we get used to the triplet pulse. Being able to do something like that with a metronome. And also just getting used to doing a legato. And sort of doing that backtracking ideas. As I said before, we're going to also be working through dominant arpeggios shapes or Dominant Pentatonic rather. And also the hero Josh, the scale which gets sort of that Japanese Lydian vibe. So we just really want to be focusing on the triplet pulse, the two notes per string idea, obviously. And just what we're doing with the legato, bring changes. Are starting the backtracks. We have to backtrack to a previous string, getting used to that backpack. So the next section of the course is going to be devoted to exercise as relating to this good time rock legato sound, we're gonna be working through the pentatonic, the dominant pentatonic and the hero Josh E scale. Once you have this kind of pentatonic legato under your belt, you can use it for improvisation and you can use it for composition. It's a really, really good staple and it's used in heaps of solos as well. So when it comes up, wolf prepared for how to deal with it. In this exercise, we'll look at a descending into ascending a minor pentatonic with the backtracking triplet feel. It's played over bars of 54 and uses all six strings. Don't be too freaked out by the weird time signature, will feel comfortable within a few play throughs. In the next exercise, we'll use a similar concept to what we've seen in figure 2.9, but use a Dominant Pentatonic to get more of a D Mixolydian field will still have that cool triplet emphasis. Once again, we'll be using 54 bars. In this exercise. We'll once again recycled the concepts that we've seen in figures to 0.92.10. But use the hero just you pentatonic and a minor. And if we laid it from a C note, it will have more of a Lydian field. We will still have that classic and familiar triplet emphasis. 5. USM Section 2D Oddly Timed & Oddly Grouped Legato + Ex 12 to 16: The next section of the course is gonna be devoted to oddly timed or oddly groups legato. Now it's probably gotten used to hearing quavers or eighth notes, or 16th, or even triplets were getting used to hearing twos, fours, and threes. So what we're going to do it in the next section of the course is mixed it up by using groups of fives and sevens. Okay, so let's start off by looking at an oddly grouped legato idea with an, a minor pentatonic, I'm going to work in groups of five, so I'm going to have something like this, 1234512345. So if I just did that back to back, It's kind of hard to catch that pulse. And the same could be said if I'm working backwards, 123451234512345, It's pretty strange. So that can be a really, really cool way to sort of mix up the dynamics and also the predictability of what you're doing when you're improvising or rotting solid. So that's a really cool thing to do with pentatonics or other turnip is string scales you could do with the dominance. Or you could do it with the hero Joshi scale once. That's pretty cool as well. So the other thing I wanted to talk about was three notes per string legato. So if I do something like this, actually end up with seven nodes. So if I've just got something, let's say G major. Let us that those string changes, 12345671234567, aren't falling on a particularly predictable bait if we're just playing in sort of straight 16th note triplets. So you're going to end up with weird pulses. And we have places for the notes default, but that makes things less predictable, which is more interesting to listen to. The next section of the course is going to be exercises devoted to these oddly timed legato. We're gonna be looking at groups of five over two notes per string pentatonics. We're gonna be looking at groups of seven over three note two strings that are diatonic modal shapes as well. Once you've mastered this idea and you start including it and you're playing, you're going to find that what you're doing is less predictable to the listeners. People aren't as used to hearing five-note and seven-note groupings. It's going to improve your solos. It's going to improve your improvisation and just make you a more interesting and well-rounded player. In the next exercise, we'll use position one of the a minor pentatonic, but ascending groups of five. Once you get comfortable with five-note grouping, it can be a great way to break up the monotony of even groups of 2468 in your improvisation or even strike groups of three. In this exercise, we'll be looking at the same position of an, a minor pentatonic seen in figure 2.12, but this time we'll be descending in groups of five. In this exercise, we'll use a dominant pentatonic licks in be, using positions 51, ascending in groups of five, and descending in groups of five. This exercise uses a similar five-note grouping concepts seen in figure 2.14, but instead of the Dominant Pentatonic, we'll be using the a minor here, adjust the scale to get more of a Japanese Lydian sounding scale. This exercise uses fragments of the fifth, first, second position of the pentatonic in a similar vein to the 5s pentatonics we've seen recently, this exercise has a less predictable pulse when compared to straight quavers or semiquavers or straight triplet run. The really cool thing about this exercise is that will drift between 56 note groupings. 6. USM Section 2E Rollin’ rollin’ rollin’…Legato + Ex 17 to 24: So in the previous section of the course, we looked at exercises working through groups of five over two notes per string. Pentatonics here adjust the scale and the Dominant Pentatonic. In this section of the course, we're gonna be dealing with three notes per string patterns. That's gonna give us odd numbers. In a lot of different situations, we can have groups of 357. What this is going to do is going to help us with that overall legato technique and build up strength and stamina as well. Okay, so let's talk about this rolling legato idea. So as I said before, we're going to end up in certain situations where we might have three notes on a string, we might have five, we might have seven. I want to show you what that all looks like in one shape. So let's just say I'm using my sum of the, a Dorian scale, but something like this doesn't sound like much. But what I've got at the start is a group of 51234513 on the second string, 123456. Sorry, in that, I've got three different groups of odd numbered nodes and forwards there. So it's good to get used to all of the contexts that we might have these three notes per string patterns. I can also have it on something a little bit more, Cindy, let's say G major shape. What I've got there once again is a group of 512345131234567. So this rolling legato idea, we're often going to find ourselves falling into groups of 357 in most situations. So the next couple of exercises in this course are going to relate to that rolling three notes per string legato. We're gonna be working through groups of 357. And you are going to find in the early stages that you fatigue a little. Don't worry too much about this. Don't power through the pain, but it's just your body getting used to this legato technique, more subtle feeling quite strenuous. And you will build up strength and endurance anyway without further ado, let's jump into these exercises. In this exercise, we'll be using a three notes per string G-major scale shape. And we'll be focusing on a simple ascending three notes per string legato. We'll only be using the brawling hammer on technique. In a similar vein to what we saw in figure 2.17. The next exercise we'll look at. We'll use an aid or in three notes per string diatonic scale. But this time we'll be focusing on descending legato, which means that we'll only be using the pull off technique. In the next exercise, we're going to be combining ascending and descending legato using three numbers, string patterns, very similar to what we've seen in figures to 0.19.18. The exercise will ascend through a 3-node per string, eolian or natural minor scale using sep tuplets, then drift into a descending CIR, any in shape. The next exercise is a 3-node per string E minor technique that tourists would wane 531 note per string. Keep in mind that we're not using the traditional diatonic scale, a three and open string pentatonic can be a little bit stretchy on the fretting hand. The next exercise is in D Phrygian and uses a rolling legato technique across two strings. Pay close attention to the quick string changes and multiple position shifts. In the next exercise, we'll be using a full tone scale in the key of F sharp. It's a good way to drill the most commonly used three notes per string shape up and down the fretboard, pay close attention to the triplet emphasis and the rolling groups of three nodes and five notes per string. In a similar vein to figure 2.22, this exercise shows that we can use the F sharp whole-tone scale or full-time scale to drill a rolling SEP, tuplet technique. This is an excellent way to keep your legato stem and drop. It will also force you to practice ascending and descending legato equally. This next exercise is very, very stretchy, as we're playing a one string diminished arpeggio, our h string that spans a whopping six threads, will essentially playing diminished arpeggios in a, jumping up in fourths, playing a sip tablet on every string. 7. USM Section 2F String Skip Legato + Ex 25 to 28: Alright, so in the next section of the course, we're gonna be talking about string skip legato. Now this isn't just going to help us with string skipping in general dexterity, the cool thing about this is that we can take something as simple as a pentatonic or diatonic scale and add string skips and it's going to create some really interesting intervals. Let's take a closer. I talk about this in a bit more detail. Okay, so let's take a look at something really simple like an, a minor pentatonic and just add some string skips to it. You can see there that there's some really, really cool sounds going on with those intervals. And it sounds a lot different than just a straight linear scale ascend. And we can do a similar idea with something like a major idea. I could do a string skip within three notes per string diatonic scale. So I could have something like this. That kind of thing almost creates, to make almost like a major seven. You kind of get that almost a major seven or sort of almost get a major nine kind of sand out of that. So these little ideas, the string skips, can be used as almost like an arpeggio substitute as well. So it's a really interesting way to get some cool sounds into validly in your playing. And it's a great way to get you used to doing some string skips as well. This is going to build dexterity and just general string crossing confidence. So the next couple of exercises in this course are going to be related to this string skip legato idea. Initially you might have some trouble jumping from string to string. But once you've got this technique in your arsenal is really, really cool way, as I said earlier, to get some funky and interesting intervals into your playing. Anyway, without further ado, let's have a look at these exercises. This exercise is a very simple first position, a minor pentatonic legato. But we're gonna be ascending with string skips. Pay close attention to your fretting and picking hand as more mistakes occur when using string skipping techniques. We'll now take the principles used in figure 2.25 and stretch the a minor pentatonic across the fretboard using all five positions. It will also include ascending and descending patterns from one position to the next. In this exercise, we'll use a 3-node per string pentatonic in the key of B minor and include some string skips and a position shift. It's a great way to get a more century Yani sounding legato over pentatonic as it creates more interesting intervals than the common to note per string pentatonic shapes. The final legato exercising this course works through multiple positions and modes of G-Major using string skips. This is an interesting way to get some larger intervallic jumps into your legato passages and create somewhat of an arpeggio sand as well. 8. USM Section 2G A Smooth Summation: Okay, so here we are at the end of section two of ultimate shred machine. And I'm talking of course, about the legato component of this course. So far, we've talked about building finger strength. We've talked about making that pinky cooperate. We've talked about heavy rock legato. We've talked about oddly times, legato, we've talked about streetscape legato, we talked about rolling legato. Those are just things off the top of my head. So we've really created an excellent foundation for you guys in regards to the legato technique. That being said, we don't want to use legato as a substitute for shredding. We want to combine it with shredding and the other techniques we use just to make you a well-rounded player. And remember that the legato sound has a different sound to that of a staccato or shredded sound. So to reiterate one more time, we just want to blend two older techniques together to make your well-rounded and excellent player that has an interesting array of techniques under their belt. That being said, if you really dig the legato sound and want to go for that Guthrie governance century on e sound. Go nuts with it. It is really, really cool. So now we're at the end of section two of the course. Let's move on to section three, which is tap and lack of bolus.