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Mozart
The music of Mozart is known and loved all over the world. His life was as fascinating as his operas!
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Why Not Do Both? (Legato Pt.2 and more...)
(30 Apr 03)
Garsed-style legato
I was wrong. Once I took lessons with him at the GIT, I was introduced to a different approach to legato-runs... I call it the "all-hammer"-approach.
See, two things will get you some choppy notes when doing legato runs: the notes you pick when you skip from one string to the next, and usually, the pull-off are a bit too... well... prominent.
Brett is using a different approach. First of all, he doesn't pick very hard, so the picked notes are at about the volume of the legato ones.
And, here's the cool thing: When descending on a string, he often is not using pull-off's, he uses HAMMER ON'S !!!
Confused?
Well, look at the next TAB. This is a basic, chromatic legato-exercise, using all four fingers of the left hand. You pick the first note (G#), hammer on to A, hammer on to A#, hammer on to B. Then, you pull off back to the A#, pull-off to A, pull off to G#
Now here is what Brett would do:
See? He hammers the notes A-A#-B, just like in the other example. When he goes back to A#, he doesn't pull-off from B to A#. Instead, he slightly raises his pinkie (which fretted the B) and hammers on the A# with his ring-finger. The pinkie is lifted off carefully, so it's not doing a pull-off. It simply stops fretting the B and leaves the string without making a noise. Then, the ring finger is being raised, and the middle finger hammers on the A. ET CETERA !
Do ya understand what I am trying to explain?
As I mentioned several times before, I thought that my legato-technique was pretty good already when I went to the GIT the first time. Well, until I saw and heard Brett play.
And I actually tried this "all hammering"-approach. It was EXTREMELY tough to avoid pull-offs and do those "backward hammer on's" instead.
Why did I do that? Nope, Brett didn't force me. He pointed out several times that if I couldn't adjust to it or if I really felt it wasn't for me, I didn't have to do it. But the sound and efficiency he got out of it really appealed to me, and I always like to try out new stuff. Sometimes it's a dead-end street to do so, but hey, maybe you'll find something new that's perfect for you, and might help you to take a big leap forward. If it doesn't, you might have lost some time, but at least you tried it.
Anyway, as I said, it was tough getting used to this, but I noticed some things about it:
1. The sound actually was smoother, more fluid. After I adjusted to the technique a bit, most of the notes were at exactly the same volume. Once I started to pick less hard when changing strings, it was hard to determine when I was going from one string to the next. It sounded like one long, flowing run, like those fast, smooth seamless piano-runs I like so much.
2. Speaking of the piano, it was a lot like piano-technique. The movement was the same when ascending and descending, which made a lot of sense to me.
3. It seemed to me as if this was a bit more accurate, required less muting, since there were no pull-off's anymore, which sometimes caused some noise when I pulled off too hard or far and accidentially hit the adjacent string.
4. One very important thing: Just like with the "alternate picking vs. economy picking"-discussion, I found out that "regular ho/po vs. all ho" is not an "either or"-thing. To quote Mick Goodrick: "My students often ask me "Should I play it this way or that way?" I always reply "Why not do both?"
Well, that applies here too. The all-ho-technique has a certain sound, certain advantages, and if you can use both that technique and regular ho's / po's, you have two different approaches and "colors" in your trickbag. You can pick which one works better for the lick you wanna play, which one is more appropiate regarding sound and feel.
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