How To Play Guitar Fast With Smooth Legato Using A Unique Practice Approach
Want to develop great legato guitar technique that sounds totally pro?
No problem.
The key is in how you practice – not just what scales you know or licks you play.
Practicing effectively helps you develop killer legato at fast speeds more quickly than someone who practices without any rhyme or reason.
Use this cool guitar practice idea to play with killer legato in no time:
This video helps you improve your legato technique with a clear and simple demonstration:
Question: “I keep making mistakes while playing legato scale sequences. It’s very frustrating! How can I finally play them fast and clean?”
When practicing the scale sequences, focus more on articulating the notes with pull-off speed. For now, substitute this approach in the place of pure speed (the speed of the note rhythms) until you are able to pick with great legato technique AND speed.
This makes your notes sound more clear, articulate and simply of a better quality.
Mistake to look out for:
Sometimes when guitarists play faster, their articulation gets worse.
This happens a lot when you start to play closer to your max speed and start to feel the stress of potentially making mistakes.
Avoid this by using less notes and funneling your frustration into finding mistakes to fix. Doing this increases your speed in addition to making the notes sound better.
Win-win!
Now use what you learned in the video together with these practice tips to improve fast:
Legato Tip #1: Practice For Consistent Cleanliness
Repetition is one of the most underutilized tools in any
guitar player’s practice routine. Why?
A lot of people just repeat a few times until it sounds mostly good or they play it correctly once or twice.
The true way to get incredible technique is to utilize
repetitive practice is to isolate small groupings of notes and repeat them many
times within a short period.
This helps you perfect entire licks cleanly and effortlessly very fast.
Legato Tip #2: Use
The Speed Burst Method
Breaking licks into small groups
Play the guitar lick with speed while pausing after the last note to rest for a second. Then repeat it again.
Use this idea to play the entire scale or guitar lick you want to use to improve your legato.
Note: To develop the best legato guitar technique possible, focus on hammering on the first note rather than picking it. Try to completely isolate your fretting hand using legato. Then use your picking hand only to mute unplayed strings.
Learn how to mute effectively on guitar to keep your legato technique as clean as possible by reading this article about cleaning up sloppy guitar playing.
Legato Tip #3: Skip Strings To Add Difficulty & Increase Results
String skipping requires you to be precise in order to play clean by muting notes and move your fretting hand with dexterity to play each note. Combining this with legato technique makes for an incredibly powerful exercise that takes your playing to the next level.
Make it easier to transition during the skip by isolating the first three notes for a bit, then moving onto the next five and finally onto the last three.
As with the previous step, focus on using a hammer-on to play the first note of each string (rather than picking). This increases the difficulty, but also helps you improve your legato in a way that most guitarists never even attempt.
Move the pattern in the tab up and down the fretboard. Then think of your own patterns to practice with this exercise.