Practice Session Vol 1 - Legato Timing & Time Feel

Practice Session Vol. 1 Modern Legato – Timing & Time Feel

Practice Session Vol. 1: – Modern Legato – Timing & Time Feel Welcome to this practice session package, the first of many on my site and many thanks for checking out the session and for your interest in my material. This session is designed as a complete 35-minute practice regime that will help you to develop the technique, control and stamina required and outlined in my ‘Modern Legato Tutorial – Part 1’. Don’t worry if you haven’t purchased the tutorial at this time (although I recommend that you do!) as the regime can function as a stand-alone product. The practice session is not a lesson but rather a series of exercises that must first be learnt and then practiced in sequence along with the video. You can think of it like an exercise video in that you will perform the exercises along with me in real time trying to match my time feel and phrasing as closely as possible. The exercises are based upon the concepts of timing, time feel and sub-division work covered in the accompanying tutorial available from the lessons section of my site. The session is divided into two sections – Slow and Fast. The Slow section is played using primarily 16th notes at 80bpm. The exact same exercises are then repeated at 120bpm. Using a media player such as Quicktime 7, VLC or Windows Media Player you can slow the video down to the required tempo for your particular level or, for that matter, speed it up! I play in 4ths tuning throughout the video but all of the TAB provided is in standard tuning. If you see my fingerings differ from yours that’s why. Here are a few tips to consider whilst performing the practice session: 1. Keep your hands, arms, shoulders and jaw relaxed throughout as much as possible. Tension will be learnt by your body and make performing the exercises at speed much harder. 2. Keep the wrist bent and use the fingers of the left hand to facilitate the hammer ons and pull offs. Don’t rotate the hand or wrist to help with the legato sound. 3. Try to feel each bar and beat – be aware of where beat 1 is each time it occurs. Tap your foot along with each exercise using the drum beat provided. Accent the tap on beat one of each bar. This will provide you with a much more solid sense of where beat 1 is in both short and long phrases and with different numbers of notes on each string. 4. Don’t use too much tension in your hammer ons or pull offs. You don’t need to hammer or pull too hard. Aim for a relaxed motion, not volume at first. 5. Try to keep your sub-divisions even and make sure you don’t accent string changes. Using the middle finger on the right hand as opposed to the pick when you change strings will help with this, although it is not essential. Above all – good luck and have fun! See you next time, Tom…