Improve your legato chops with this fun lick with Guitar Control instructor Darrin Goodman. Be sure to get the free tabs for this lesson and you can be rockin’ this killer legato lick tonight!
Introduction
Hey everybody how’s it going? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson. Today I want to show you how to play a legato lick in the key of E minor and this is a movable shape and I’ll show you how you can transpose this into whatever key that you want to play it in. This is a lick that is going to be kind of a good exercise for legato playing and it’s also something for if you want to be able to play like a fast run that sounds really cool but isn’t; it sounds harder than it actually is. So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look at this killer legato lick.
Legato Lick In E Minor Sequence
All right so like I said this is in the key of E minor, but we’re actually going to be starting on D because I’m using the fifth degree of the major scale, the Mixolydian mode shape. So the fifth degree in the key of E minor actually starts on D so if you know the shape you can just move it around and play it in whatever key you want. All right so first let’s just take a look at what the pattern is and this is all three notes per string and I’m starting here on the 10th fret of the low E string and then to the 12th fret and then the 14th fret. Now when I do this I use my first, second and then fourth finger, but some people find it easier to go first, third, and fourth finger like that, whichever way is more comfortable for you to play is fine, but just choose one; I’ve seen a lot of my students when they first start doing stuff like this that when they ascend the scale they’ll use their first, second and fourth finger and then when they descend they’ll switch out their third for their second finger, but you want consistency. So that’s the shape 10th fret, 12th fret, 14th fret and then on the A string it’s the same shape 10th fret, 12th fret, 14th fret and then on the D string again same shape again. Now when we go to the G string we have to move up a half step so now it’s 11th fret, 12th fret, 14th fret and then we go to the B string we have to move up a half step again to 12th fret, 13th fret, 15th fret and then finally on the high E string its 12th fret, 14th fret, 15th fret. All right so the first thing you want to do if you don’t already know this pattern is to memorize that this will make this a lot easier.
All right so for as far as this lick goes we’re going to pick the first note on the low E string and then we’re going to hammer-on to the 12th fret and 14th fret and then we’re going to do that again on the A string… And then when we go to the D string we’re going to…. and that is basically how the riff works it’s based on three strings. You’ll find that a lot of licks are this way and they’re like a little pattern of so many notes ascending and so many notes descending. Maybe the sequence is based on two strings or three strings or maybe four strings and then that then it just repeats. We’re going to start that sequence again, but now we’re going to start it on the A string and on the A string we’re going to pick, hammer, hammer to the D string pick, hammer, hammer to the G string pick, hammer, hammer, pull, pull…
So as you can see that’s how the pattern is just repeating… now we’re going to start it again starting on the D string; so pick, hammer, hammer to the G string pick, hammer, hammer to the B string pick, hammer, hammer, pull, pull… And then finally we would start on the G string; pick, hammer, hammer, to the B string pick, hammer, hammer and then the high E string pick, hammer, hammer, pull, pull and that’s the entire legato lick sequence.
Changing Keys
All right so like I said before you can you can move this around. So if this is like kind of new to you, maybe playing up here is a little too high and you feel a little cramped you can just move the shape down. So like say we started it here on the seventh fret then it would be; seven, nine, eleven… you can move it around to wherever you want. So if you if you’re curious to know to like how to know what key you want you’re going to do this in so let’s say you decided that you wanted to play this in the key of A minor the Mixolydian pattern is going to start a whole step below whatever minor key is. So if this is A minor we would start it here… Now playing down here you might have especially if you’re new this might be now the frets are farther apart and your arms stretched out; so just play around till you find a neutral spot that feels good and then practice it in different keys. Now you could also do this over something that was in a major key. So if you were going to do this in the key of G major the easiest thing to do in that case is to find out what your relative minor key is and so how you do that is you just go down a step and a half. So here’s G and down a whole step and then a half we get E minor, we would start here just like the way we originally did it. Let’s say that you want to do this in the key of A major; here’s A and down a step and a half is F sharp and then down a whole step from there and that would be up here… just like that.
Conclusion
All right so there you have it, a pretty cool sounding, but not too difficult to play legato lick in E minor. I realize and if you’re completely a beginner it might seem impossible and this isn’t really something that’s aimed for a total beginner. This if you’ve had a little bit of experience, but even if you are a beginner and you’ve never done anything like this, it’s kind of a good place just to start and work it out really slow and don’t have any wild expectations about it. All right so if you like this lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up and leave a comment down below if you have any questions about this or other guitar related topics. If you’ve not already done so please subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell so you don’t miss any of the content that we upload throughout the week. Well that is all I have for you today. Thanks for watching Improve Your Legato Chops With This Fun Lick and have a great day.
