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Modern Legato Part 3

MODERN LEGATO

Picture by Laurie Monk

Part Three…Constructing Lines by Tom Quayle

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Hey there guys, and welcome to the third part of my ‘Modern Legato’ tutorial. For those of you who are coming into this series without checking out parts one and two I would certainly recommend them as a starting point as they contain all the fundamental technical requirements and ideas that culminate in this

lesson. However, they are not a pre-requisite and should be seen as stand-alone tutorials in their own right, so rest safe in the knowledge that you are still going to get a lot of ‘legato goodness’ from this lesson. This tutorial is quite different from the previous two in that it deals primarily not with the technical aspects of legato

playing, but rather the elements that make up my thought processes when it comes to line construction and changes playing. You’ll be developing key skills that will allow you to play long, flowing lines improvisationally, whether dealing with a single chord vamp or the most complex set of chord changes. 1

Modern Legato Part 3 The first element we’ll be dealing with here is the concept of breaking down the long legato lines that I play into very small, digestible and more importantly, manipulatable fragments. These fragments can be strung together to create longer lines that traverse the fretboard in a huge number of ways. We’ll be splitting our fragments into four categories - Scale Fragments, Arpeggio Fragments, Chromatic Fragments and Transitional Fragments.

• Scale fragments are small

passages of notes on the same string.

• Arpeggio fragments are

phrases built form 3rd intervals starting from any finger.

• Chromatic fragments

contain chromatic passing tones, adding harmonic interest to the line. • Transitional fragments allow for position shifts using a pivotal finger placement or slides By combining each of these fragments types together along with one and two note

connection tones on adjacent strings, we can create long and interesting lines that have an infinite number of possible directions. You’ll find an accompanying PDF file that outlines all of the fragments and the video shows you a host of lines and ways that you can combine them to make lines. You will also be able to find your own fragments and arrange them in ways that suit your particular playing style and the sound you have in your head. As ever, learn the

fragments and then practice manipulating them and moving between them. Gradually, this process will become so fluid and natural to you that you’ll be able to improvise lines of the same quality that you compose. Experimentation will lead to experience and once you have enough experience you’ll be confidently creating complex flowing lines all over the fretboard. Needless to say, good fretboard knowledge is a pre-requisite here.

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Rhythmic Awareness… The second part of this tutorial deals with your awareness of how many notes you are playing within your lines. In other words, when you’re playing a line do you find yourself resolving it where you want to finish or do you trip up rhythmically and find it difficult to control the length and end point of your phrase. If you’ve ever started a complex improvised line and felt that feeling of uncertainty and a lack of rhythmic control then you know what I’m talking about here. I often encounter students with this problem who can play really cool lines but find it difficult to resolve their phrases well rhythmically and display control over where the phrase ends within the bar. To practice developing this rhythmic control we’ll be using a very simple exercise that can be scaled to a number of difficulty levels depending on where you feel you’re at in your own playing. I recommend starting from the beginning for now. The exercise involves picking a subdivision of the bar and working out how many notes it takes to fill the bar

and play one extra note on beat one of the next bar. For example, for a bar of 8th notes in 4/4 we require 8 notes to fill the bar and one extra note to resolve our phrase into beat one of the following bar totalling 9 notes. If we used 16th notes we would require a 17 note phrase to resolve onto beat one of the new bar. For 8th note triplets we require 13 notes and for 16th note triplets we need 25 notes. Starting with 8th notes at a tempo that is comfortable for you, start to construct legato phrases that start on beat one and contain the 9 required notes to resolve onto beat one of the next bar. Each phrase that you construct should be unique - you are not trying to develop a catalogue of phrases or licks here, but rather develop the skills required to improvise them on the spot. After a short period of time you’ll have developed an aural and physical awareness of what a nine note phrase sounds and feels like and this will become part of your rhythmic vocabulary on an improvisational level. Now repeat the same exercise but with 8th note triplets,

creating phrases that are 13 notes long. The feel will be different as you’re now working with odd numbered groupings as opposed to the even groupings of 8th notes. Net move on to 16th note phrases and finally 16th note triplet phrases. You may need to alter the tempo to suit your technical level but over time you’ll find that you are building a significant ability to construct lines that resolve in a rhythmically strong manner. Once you feel comfortable with all of these sub-divisions you can start to move the end point of your phrases. Perhaps

practice playing lines that last for two bars, resolving onto the first beat of the third bar. You could practice resolving your phrases half way through the bar on beats two, three or four or even on off beat 8th, 16th or triplets at any point within the bar. The point is to setup a specific rhythmic scenario and get good at improvising lines within it.

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Modern Legato Part 3

The final part of Modern Legato part 3 deals with the problem that occur when attempting to improvise using legato technique over chord changes. Many of the challenges you face when playing over chord changes are of course not unique to legato technique, such as fretboard knowledge, chord scale relationships, phrasing, motivic development and harmonic/aural awareness. These elements will be left to other tutorials and I’ll be making the assumption that you have at least some awareness of what scales to play over each chord and where those scales are located on the fretboard. If not then I suggest working on those aspects of your knowledge and playing before worrying about the topics in this section of the tutorial but even if you only know minor pentatonic scales and the Dorian mode you’ll be able to get a lot from this section. One of the biggest problems with legato

…Legato Over Chord Changes technique is that we all get very familiar with particular scale and arpeggio fingerings that flow under our fingers in one key or harmonic area. As we approach each new string the layout of notes feels familiar and usually fits under the fingers in a logical manner. I demonstrate this idea on the video to give you a better idea of what I’m talking about but if you’ve ever run up and down a Dorian scale using legato I’m sure it feels very familiar to you by now and requires little in the way of thought. Once we change key or scale to fit a new chord, the transition from our previous scale to the new one can throw our fingers out of sync and feel unfamiliar to most people. Usually, once people are into the new scale, they are fine (providing their fretboard knowledge is good enough) but the transition often causes problems and if the transition goes awry then the rest of the line will follow suit. In order to solve this issue we need to practice those transitions, developing

the ability to think ahead somewhat with our line to negotiate the more complex fingering and aural/visual issues that occur during the chord change. If you have become adept at the first part of this tutorial and can construct lines that are interesting over one chord then this new idea shouldn’t be too hard to practice as it is achieved in much the same way. In order to practice the changes between each scale effectively we simply need to slow down and visualise the transitions at a tempo that allows us to think ahead a little bit and be ready to negotiate the more complex fingerings required to make the scale change smoothly. Thinking ahead a few notes is similar to the way chess players think ahead a few moves in a match. You want to slowly build up the ability to see and hear where the line wants to go and have the technical facility to negotiate that line without tripping up over the unfamiliar fingerings. Because you can’t possibly practice every

fingering that might occur in the middle of the line you are practicing to develop control over your technique and not to have the technique control you and dictate the direction of the line down the easiest path or fingering every time. Slow practice yields the best results as you have time to think, leading you eventually to an ability to process this information on a subconscious level freeing up your mind from technical thoughts, allowing you to focus on the music. The exercises are explained, demonstrated and transcribed on the accompanying video and PDF files so you’ll have plenty of tangible examples to try out. The main thing here though is to practice those chord change transitions as slowly as you need to in order to develop the technical and visual facility to play what you want to play, not what the guitar or your fingers tell you to.

ENJOY THE VIDEO & GOOD LUCK!

! Tom Quayle

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