How To Play Guitar Fast Without A Pick By Adding Bursts Of Lightning To Your Fingers With Clean & Smooth Legato

Want the power to play guitar fast without a pick? As an electric guitarist, this means you never have to worry about dropping your pick while playing, not having a pick handy while playing for friends or feeling like your technique is limited.

Knowing how to play with killer legato guitar technique gives you the ability to play awesome musical ideas whenever someone hands you a guitar.

These exercises improve your legato guitar playing so you still play badass guitar in times when other players make excuses that they “can’t play without a pick”:

Legato Technique Exercise #1: Play Uninterrupted & Flowing Legato Runs Without Needing To Pick The String To Get Started

It’s common for guitarists to begin their legato runs by picking the string, then using hammer-ons and pull-offs to play the rest of the notes.

You take your legato technique to the next level when you are able to begin a legato run without ever picking the string and keep it going as long as you want. This isn’t as hard as it might seem either.

Here’s what to do:

Instead of picking the string to begin a long legato run, hammer-on with one of your fretting hand fingers.

Do this cleanly and effectively by:

Thinking of this as “fretting hand tapping” (since you are performing the exact same movement)
Make sure the strings around the one you are playing on are effectively muted to eliminate unwanted guitar string noise.

Work on this skill in short bursts to get in as many reps as you can in a small amount of time. This helps you master the skill quickly.

For example, play the first three notes of this lick many times at a fast speed, with a short pause in between. Then add the last three notes once this becomes easier:

Practicing short bursts with this subtle legato technique trains your legato to make it smoother and helps you improve your guitar playing endurance as well.

Legato Technique Exercise #2: Put Lightning In Your Fingers Using Rapid-Fire Position Jumps

Making quick shifts in position along the fretboard gives your legato runs a quick jolt of energy that makes any lick sound awesome.

Practice this by taking any scale you know and finding the notes of that scale that begin one note higher than the one you are on.

For example, this tab shows the first three notes of a C minor scale being played by starting on the 3^rd fret. Then it quickly jumps positions to play three notes beginning from the 6^th fret:

Apply this same idea not just to one string of a scale, but to an entire scale pattern. This means that if you are playing a 5-string scale pattern, you alternate shifting positions (as done in the tab) on the first, second, third, fourth and fifth strings of the pattern.

This not only gives your fretting hand a work out, but helps you visualize the fretboard better. This helps you use your legato technique to play rapid-fire guitar licks from different positions in any given pattern.

Practice this in any scale pattern, by using variations in the number of notes played per positions and by using different sequences.

Legato Technique Exercise #3: Transform Scales Into Killer Licks That Flow Across The Fretboard With Ease

Using your picking hand index or middle finger to tap gives you more creative soloing options while making your legato technique flow smoothly across the fretboard with incredible speed.

Introduce tapping into your legato playing by simply tapping the last note on the string while playing scale patterns.

For example:

Mastering this requires time to perfect your muting while transferring strings (using the technique described in the link of the first exercise). So, pay close attention to any string noise while transferring from string to string.

Work on playing the first four notes of the pattern until you are able to play them perfectly with no unwanted string noise. Then add the rest of the pattern.

This sounds really smooth and cool. Combining tapping and legato in this manner gives you the power to play guitar incredibly fast without ever needing a pick.

Next, use a similar concept as in exercise one to combine two adjacent scale patterns together with tapping and legato.

Like this:

Make it your goal to be able to use legato and tapping freely without string noise. Finally, here is one more advanced sequencing exercise to help you achieve this goal:

Practicing the exercises in this article gives you the power to play guitar fast without a pick. So next time you go to play guitar with friends and they offer you a pick… you can say “No thanks, I don’t need it!”

Want to learn more cool ways to develop killer speed and become a better guitarist? Become a badass shredder right away using these free guitar playing tips.