Legato is the musical term used to indicate that notes should be played smoothly. The term legato literally means “bound” in Italian, which suggests the notes are bound or tied together. Musically speaking, this means that there should be no audible gap or delay between the sound of each note.

Depending on which instrument you play, there are numerous ways to achieve this. Bowed string players may play legato simply by playing several notes in a single stroke of the bow. Wind players may achieve this by changing notes in a single breath. Guitarists have an arguably more difficult job to play legato. To play legato on the guitar requires impeccable coordination between the fingers of both hands. It’s for this reason that I always consider strong legato technique to be one of the hallmarks of a good guitarist.

To ensure you have a clear understanding of what legato is, listen to the following examples. Note the difference in sound between the legato, detached and staccato versions of the musical extract.

Let’s look at how to practice legato technique on the guitar. I’m going to cover a series of exercises and I’d suggest working on them in the order below. The idea here is to allow you to focus on building up a solid legato technique with each hand separately at first, before synchronising them together towards to the end. The reason for doing this is that focusing on one hand at a time allows you to carefully consider your movements in more detail, compared to trying to work on two very different movements (left and right hand) at the same time.

We’re going to begin with a single finger legato exercise for the right hand. The reason for this is to understand on a deeper level exactly what happens when our fingers play the strings.

When you play a string, there are three main components to the movement; touch, play and return. This is the same whether you play legato, staccato and anywhere in between. We must always touch the string first, play the string and then return to our starting position so we can repeat the process and play more notes.

With your fingers hovering above the strings, practice the following movements on a single open string using your index finger.

Touch the string at your ideal point of contact. The ideal point of contact should be a place where the string is touching the edge of your finger nail and the tip of your finger at the same time. Finding this point of contact allows you to feel the string with your fingertip before playing and gives you plenty of control over when you release the string. Finding the edge of your nail means the finger is ideally placed to push through the string, allowing the string to pass over the remaining part of your nail to produce good tone. There are numerous methods of shaping your nails for good tone, but that may well be a lesson for another day!

Play the string with your preferred technique (apoyando or tirando). If you’d like more guidance on either of these techniques, check out our apoyando and tirando technique lessons. Ensure you have played a full sounding note before moving on to the next stage.

As soon as you’ve played a full sounding note, let the finger spring back to its starting position. Allow the finger to do this in its own time. Imagine that you are relaxing the finger after playing rather than forcing it back into position. This will encourage your fingers to play with minimal tension.

When you feel like you have understood the three stages above and have made progress with playing in this way, do the same thing with your middle finger and annular finger. If you play using your little finger to pluck the strings, you can train this one in the above way too.

Central to the legato technique is the concept of coordination. This encapsulates both coordination between the hands and coordination of the fingers on each individual hand. Before we can expect to coordinate the hands together, we need to coordinate the fingers on each hand separately. This next exercise concentrates on coordinating your right hand fingers to play legato.

We covered the concept of a three-part movement for every note. We now need to look at the duration of each part. To play legato, we’d like the ‘play’ part to last the longest of the overall movement, spending minimal time doing the others. This is particularly true of the ‘touch’ part, as this is the part which stops the string from sounding.

Begin by playing the string to establish your current duration for each part of the movement. What do you notice? How long do you spend touching the string? Does your note sound legato or is there space between each sound? How long does it take your finger to return to its starting position above the strings?

If you feel yourself lingering too long on the string during the touch stage, you’ll need to work on speeding this up. This is the most critical part of developing your legato technique. It would be of limited value to move on to the combination part of this lesson until the duration of the touch part is acceptable to your ears.

Once you’ve practiced the above exercise using a single finger, move on to alternating between fingers of your choice. For most, this will be the index and middle fingers however feel free to practice all combinations for a full workout.

Now that you’ve mastered the right hand, let’s look at your left hand’s role in playing legato. There are several schools of thought for how to set up the hand and how to coordinate the movements of the left hand. I’m going to show you what I recommend for my guitar students, although please note that there are more ways to do this. I’m not suggesting this is the only way so please feel free to tweak this if you feel more comfortable doing so.

Similar to the right hand movement, fretting a note can also be broken down into specific stages; touch, press and return. Notice the similarities to the right hand? Keep this in mind as we will be using this when it comes to the combination exercise later.

Begin with your left hand fingers hovering above the strings in 5^th position. Fret a C on the 3^rd string using your 1^st finger (fret 5) in the following way:

Touch the string in the correct place behind the fret. If you need more guidance on exactly where this is, check out our lesson on basic left hand positioning. Once you’ve touched the string in the correct place, immediately move onto stage two: “press”.

Press the finger on the string and maintain the correct amount of pressure in order to sound the note. It may be useful to play the string here and listen to the sound, but don’t be concerned with making it sound legato just yet. Just enjoy the sound and let the note sing for at least a couple of seconds.

Lift the finger off the string and return to its original position above the strings. Similarly to the right hand, imagine you are relaxing the finger rather than forcing it back at this point.

Repeat the same exercise for each of the fingers for the following notes:

• Finger 2 – C# (fret 6 on string 3)
• Finger 3 – D (fret 7 on string 3)
• Finger 4 – D# (fret 8 on string 3)

We mentioned how important single hand coordination is for the right hand, now it’s time to do the same for the left hand. To achieve legato notes, you will need to understand how the duration of each part of your left hand movement affects the quality of your legato technique.

What we would like to do is to coordinate your left hand fingers so that as one finger initiates its ‘return’, the next finger initiates its ‘touch’. The best way to imagine this is to imagine your fingers are walking. When we walk, both feet are temporarily on the ground together. This happens when one foot has just touched the ground and the other is preparing to lift.

This is different to running, where both feet are temporarily in the air at the same time. If we have nothing holding down a note on the guitar, we have no sound (unless we are playing an open string).

For this exercise, follow the steps below:

1. Touch and hold a C on fret 5 (string 3) using your 1^st finger.
2. As you initiate the lift/return of the 1^st finger, touch and hold the note D on fret 7 (string 3) using the 3^rd This should feel like you’re ‘stepping’ from one note to the next.
3. Repeat the process in reverse.

Can you feel the fingers step between notes? How long do they spend touching the string at the same time? Is it possible to reduce the amount of time they spend touching the string at the same time?

The less time your fingers spend touching the string at the same time, the smoother your legato notes will sound (once coordinated properly with the right hand). Focus on reducing the time they spend on the string together.

There are multiple combinations of fingers/notes you can practice on the 3^rd string alone. Spend a little time using the other fingers in various combinations to give them all a bit of practice time with this technique. Try the following left hand finger combinations:

• 1-2
• 2-3
• 3-4
• 1-3
• 2-4
• 1-4

Once you’ve had a good practice of this and you feel more confident in stepping between the notes, move on to the next exercise where we coordinate both hands to produce legato notes.

This is the part of the legato lesson where it all comes together. Before tackling this part, you’ll need to feel confident in your ability to coordinate your left hand and right hand separately to play legato notes. If you feel you need more time working on the hands in isolation, then please go ahead and do so.

We’re going to use exactly the same exercises we used earlier for the left and right hands., but execute the movements in perfect synchronisation. Remember when I mentioned how similar the stages are for each hands movement? Keep that in mind. Here’s what we’re looking for:

Listen carefully to the sound, do the notes sound legato? Or is there a gap between the notes? If so, it will be because of one of the following two things (or combination of both!):

1. The hands are out of sync. Your left or right hand is touching the string before the other.
2. One or both of the hands are touching the string for too long.

If you’re struggling to troubleshoot this in real time, try recording a video of hands as you play. Watching a video of yourself attempt this exercise may help you to understand which hand is hampering your legato technique.

Playing with an exceptionally smooth legato technique requires very small margins for error. It can often be hard to establish where the problem lies. A deep understanding of the concepts covered in this legato lesson along with practical experience of the exercises should help you to improve your legato technique over time. As with all things practice related, be persistent in your efforts and keep your ears and mind open.