Expressive Articulation: Legato

Slur It — Hammer-Ons & Pull-Offs

A scale doesn't have to be one picked note after another. Legato — Italian for tied together — means letting notes flow into each other without re-picking. On guitar that's the hammer-on and the pull-off:

  • Hammer-on — you pick a note, then hammer a higher finger down onto the same string to sound the next note. No second pick.
  • Pull-off — you pick a note, then pull the finger off (flicking the string a little) to sound a lower fretted note already waiting underneath. No second pick.

In notation, legato is written as a slur — a curved line arching over the notes that belong to one breath of sound. The notation now draws that curve over each on-one-string group of the scale: pick the first note of the curve, then hammer or pull the rest.

Why bother? Legato is how a scale stops sounding like an exercise and starts sounding like a phrase — smoother, faster, and far less tiring than picking every note. It is the single biggest step toward playing scales musically instead of mechanically.

Read the Slurs — One Curve Per String

Here is C major with legato marked. A slur curve arches over each three-note string group. Each curve is one instruction: pick the first note, hammer onto the other two. Notice you only pick once per string — six picks for the whole run instead of eighteen. Read the curves the way you'd read a breath mark: everything under one arc is one connected gesture.

Play It Both Ways — Picked, Then Legato

  • First pass: pick every note cleanly, no legato — just learn the run and hear the even rhythm
  • Second pass: follow the slurs — pick only the FIRST note under each curve, then hammer-on (going up) or pull-off (coming down) for the rest of that curve
  • On the way up the slurred notes are hammer-ons; on the way down they are pull-offs — same curves, opposite hand motion
  • Hammer hard enough that the hammered note rings as loud as the picked one — weak hammer-ons are the most common legato fault
  • If a slurred note is muddy or silent, slow down: the finger has to land firmly and exactly on the fret, not behind it
  • Goal: the whole curve sounds like one smooth gesture, not three separate notes