S PDL
Jeff Scheetz’s Rock Tricks
Legato and Staccato
When you hear the words legato and staccato, it may make you think
of an excessively fast, Italian sports car. And as cool as that might be,
it’s unfortunately not the case – these two terms actually deal with
specific techniques on the guitar, and with music in general.
When we talk about these techniques, we can usually use common
terms to describe each way of playing. Legato is usually described
as “smooth, fluid” playing, and staccato described as “choppy, broken
up” playing. Listen to players like Allan Holdsworth or Steve Vai to
hear examples of legato technique and Al Di Meola or Steve Morse to
hear some great staccato playing. It should be noted that all of these
players are incredibly proficient and use both techniques, but their individual styles may lend them to lean on one style over another.
So if it’s not a sports car, what is it? The simple definition for legato is
“in a smooth, flowing manner,” meaning there are no breaks between
notes. Playing legato means that you are holding each note out
right to the very last second before moving to the next one. On the
opposite end of the musical spectrum, staccato means, “each note is
sharply detached or separated from the others.” As you’re probably
able to surmise, playing staccato means cutting off each note, and
keeping the notes short.
The legato technique is often associated with hammer-ons and pull-offs. This should be no surprise; when we’re performing hammer-ons,
we are playing in the ultimate legato style. We are holding a note as
long as we can before hammering another one right on top of it, and
eliminating any break between the two. Of course, we can make our
hammer-ons a bit more staccato by palm muting with our right hand
– even when we are playing in a legato style with our left, we can
make the overall sound staccato by using our right.
And the concepts of legato and staccato are not limited to lead/solo
playing – we can also use these with chords. This is controlled in
much the same way – use your hand to palm mute for a staccato
sound, or alternately mute the strings by grabbing with your left.
Likewise, if you want to play rhythm in a legato style, you’ll want to let
each chord bleed into each other, for a smoother, flowing feel.
A place you will hear these techniques frequently is in bass lines.
Often bass players will be thumping away on the low G, and you’ll
hear a big difference as they move between legato and staccato
styles – it will have a big effect on the rhythm of the song. If you’re
putting together a song where the rhythm really needs to be pumping
along, you’ll want the bass player in a staccato frame of mind.
So practice playing whatever scale strikes your fancy, up and down
and both ways. Remember that when you’re playing staccato, you
want each note to have the same value; you don’t want to hold one
out a little bit longer and then cut one off too short. Everything is too
staccato for a lot of beginning and intermediate players – they’re not
even letting the notes ring out. You want to make sure each note gets
the same value – it’s the “feel” of those notes that will vary. Practice
both techniques, so you can find out which style fits you the best!
Head to premierguitar.com
to find video lesson segments, rhythm
tracks, notation and Power Tab - powered
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88 PREMIER GUI TAR NOVEMBER 2007
www.premierguitar.com
