5 Guitar Practice Tips That Clean Up Sloppy Legato Guitar Technique

By Tom Hess

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Legato guitar playing gives you an awesome, fluid sound... but many guitar players struggle with this technique.

You are about to learn how to master legato guitar technique the easy way and stop feeling frustrated.

This video shows effective ways to practice legato guitar technique and accelerate your progress:

• Weak articulation that causes your notes to sound sloppy and unclear. (This is easy to solve, I explain how to do this below).
   
• Excess muscle tension in your arms and fingers that makes legato guitar playing feel like a struggle. When you release that tension, guitar playing becomes effortless (more below).

You can improve your legato guitar playing with any exercise you practice when you know what to focus on and how to focus on it.

These practice tips help your legato guitar playing improve and make your technique feel effortless:

 

Legato Guitar Technique Practice Tip #1: Articulate The String More Often With The Pick.

Do this as part of your warm up before guitar practice to make the lick you are practicing feel easier and sound cleaner at faster speeds.

Articulating the string more often with the pick helps to articulate hammer ons and pull offs that happen right after the picked note. This sets a benchmark for how articulate the notes need to sound.

Watch the video to see this guitar practice tip in action.

After the benchmark is established, begin to pick the string less to challenge your fretting hand more. 

Maximizing power of your legato guitar playing requires a high level of fretting hand finger independence. When your fingers move independently of each other, you can play faster, cleaner and with a lot less effort.

Want to improve your fretting hand finger independence? Download this free eGuide to master fretting hand finger independence for guitar, so your playing starts to feel effortless and you play legato guitar technique as fast as you want.
 

Legato Guitar Technique Practice Tip #2: Increase The Difficulty Of The Hardest Parts Of Your Legato Guitar Licks

Make legato guitar playing harder for any lick by:

• Repeating the challenging part of the lick twice. 
   
• Practicing the lick unplugged. 
   
• Moving the lick to a lower part of the fretboard where frets are further apart. 

Note: Don’t overdo unplugged legato guitar technique practice. Too much guitar practice without an amp makes it hard to notice sloppy mistakes caused by open string noise.

Schedule some of your guitar practice time to play with distortion to get used to controlling open string noise  and make your legato playing sound clean.

At first, use 50% of your legato guitar practice time on clean settings and the other 50% to practice with distortion. As your technique improves, spend less time playing unplugged and more time practicing with the sound you actually use in real-life playing. 
 

Legato Guitar Technique Practice Tip #3: Create Variations From The Original Legato Guitar Playing Exercise

You don't need many exercises to master legato technique. That said, having a collection of strategically selected guitar practice exercises helps you to:

1. Minimize boredom. You are human, not a machine. You need some variety in your legato guitar technique practice to keep practicing fun.
    
2. Practice legato in a variety of contexts. 

Here is how to create variations from your legato guitar practice exercises:

Identify the specific technical challenge you want to improve in your legato playing. Then create new legato licks that contain that challenge. Make your exercises as diverse as possible, while focusing on the main legato guitar technique element you want to refine. Vary elements such as:

• The scale used.
   
• Area of the fretboard where exercises are played.
   
• Rhythm of the notes.
   
• Strings the exercises are played on.

Group your guitar practice exercises based on the challenge they help you overcome. This gives you freedom to select any exercise from a particular group, focus on the specific problem you want to work on and have fun in the process. 
 

Legato Guitar Technique Practice Tip #4: Alternate Between Using Legato Guitar Playing & Picking Every Single Note.

Play the guitar practice exercise one time using legato (pick as few notes as possible) followed by playing the it once while picking every note (no legato).

This helps you in 2 ways:

1. You get to hear how clear the notes of the guitar practice exercise sound at full power (when every note is picked). Your intention must be to make your hammer ons and pull offs as articulate as your picked notes (even though this is not physically possible). This intention helps you refine the power of your legato playing.

I call this practice approach for legato guitar playing: Legato Accuracy Confirmation ^TM

2. You can work on the guitar practice exercise many more times by alternating legato guitar playing with normally picked notes. Your fretting hand gets a bit of a break between legato and picked notes. This helps you train in your legato guitar practice longer without becoming tired. 
    

Legato Guitar Technique Practice Tip #5: Practice Legato Guitar Playing Trills Using Pairs Of Fingers That Are Least Independent Of Each Other

Finger strength gadgets do not help your finger strength for legato. Trills (rapid alternation of hammer ons and pull offs) do. Trills also help you control excess tension in your fingers and make your fingers more independent of each other.

Set aside 5-10 minutes per day of guitar practice to practice trills with pairs of fingers you want to make more independent.

Now that you understand how to master legato guitar playing, your next step to becoming an awesome guitarist is to master finger independence, make everything you play feel easy and stop struggling to play what you want on guitar. Download this free eGuide to master fretting hand finger independence, stop feeling frustrated and start playing guitar technique in the way you've always wanted to.

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About Tom Hess: Tom Hess is a guitar teacher, music career mentor and guitar teacher trainer. He teaches rock guitar lessons online to students from all over the world and conducts instructional live guitar training events attended by musicians from over 50 countries.

Getting better with your legato guitar playing skills? Learn how to reach your other musical goals with the best online guitar lessons for rock and metal styles.

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