When picking everything, the fretting fingers need only press firmly enough to fret the notes. With all hammers, the fingers must transfer enough energy into the string to sound the note, so the fingers must develop enough energy before they strike the string.
1 Like
Related (ish) question: are there any players who can do all-hammers reliably on acoustic?
I recall an amazing legato passage in Greg Howe’s “Desiderata” (on a nylon string I believe), but it may have involved pulloffs. Will see if I find it on YT 
On an acoustic the noise of string vibrating between the nut and the lower fret would be much more audible. I’m not sure it’s a goal worth working toward.
That said, Michael Hedges did a lot of hammers from nowhere on acoustic and he sounded great so I don’t really know.
3 Likes
Boom. Love Michael Hedges. Sort of apples and oranges with what he played and what the elite electric legato guys do though. Everything he did was so percussive. Electric legato involving all hammers, based on all prior discussion here, is to minimize any attack so it sounds like a horn player’s legato. Super smooth. Anyway, I need to go listen to Aerial Boundaries now.
Yes please! I’d love to see that if you find it! If he’s doing this and not pulling off and it sounds even (and it’s not a nylon with an internal pickup, but a mic’d accoustic nylon), I’ll retract all statements of ‘on the classical guitar, good sounding descending slurs must be done like Scott Tennant demonstrates’ lol
Same. About 10 years ago I went through a period where I played acoustic almost exclusively. I was listening to Michael’s music constantly.
Amazing song and amazing album. Oracle is another favourite.
Phil Keaggy is another MONSTER acoustic player (and electric actually). Are you familiar with his work at all? He was heavily influenced by Hedges with the percussive slap/harmonics/alt tuning stuff. He also shreds (single note scales) on acoustic…which I can’t say I’ve ever heard from Hedges. Aerial Boundaries was the only album of his I ever purchased. I loved it so much I never thought the need to hear anything else he did lol! I will check out Oracle.
Phil Keaggy is great. I just realized I haven’t listened to his playing in years, thanks for reminding me of him!
I think Aerial Boundaries, Taproot and Oracle are Michael’s “must have” albums. Live on the Double Planet is great too.
1 Like
I’ve bit my tongue on a number of occasions in this thread now, because Harrison is worlds beyond me and because there are some incredibly thoughtful players already discussing this…
…but his writing off of “Petrucci-type ‘rock’ legato” really didn’t sit well with me when I first saw this video, and hasn’t gotten better with time. Is Marshall Harrison a far more accomplished technician than me? Absolutely. Is he, technically speaking, not wrong, that a hammer-on/pull-off approach that doesnt rely on picking but does seek to produce a clear, defined attack on every note, not “legato” in the classical sense? Again, absolutely. Is it still a perfectly valid, musically distinct, and effective way of playing passages on the guitar, that conveys a unique loose, flowing, musical vibe? Yeah, it is, and writing it off as not worth pursuing for philosophical reasons is kind of closing a door for no good reason at all.
Again, dude can place circles around me, but that seemed like an example of taking musical purism too far… even before you eviscerated his entire premise by casually pointing out that even what he is doing isn’t really, technically speaking, legato either.
1 Like
Preaching to the converted @Drew - agree 100%. The guy is smug as hell and I never appreciated his general demeanour. I hate it when players slate other’s methods to justify there own choices, no matter how good the outcome (and unfortunately in this case its astoundingly good!). Oh well!
1 Like
The tricky thing, of course, is you’re right and he really is a generational talent - he and Rusty Cooley were the two guys who absolutely blew my mind in the late 90s/early 2000s when the internet strted to allow players of their generation a new platform, and I would never want to take away from just how shockingly good he is. Though from the interviews I’ve seen with them, I couldn’t imagine two guys with more radically different personalities.
But speaking personally, I’m maybe at best half the talent Harrison is… But my legato only really began to come together when I started practicing unplugged to really force myself to develop clear note articulation. He’d tell me I’m wrong to be focused on that, and classically speaking he’d be right, but at the end of the day, it’s a musically valid way of playing single-note lines and I’m not going to get super reductive about technical definitions if i like how it sounds.
1 Like
I don’t really agree. The degree of smoothness of your legato is not based (in my book) on yours Vs Harrison’s, but in relation to the staccato of your picking. In a musical context, you define the tonal/stylistic landscape of your own playing. Of course you could work on getting your legato smoother, but you could also change your picking to be more agressive, thus widening the tonal spectrum within that musical context. I know that I very much prefer the pull-offs in 99% of situations. I’m not a fan of the ultra consistancy of Holdsworth or Harrison as a default tone, for some reason it makes me feel a bit icky - a bit like autotune on vocals. But I’m very much interested in what situations it would benefit me in using - small doses and to play a specific line.
1 Like
Beside clean tone (for praticing clarity), overdriven tone (for practicing muting) I also used high gain with fast high threshold noise gate. Funny thing to check if your legato is actually strong )
2 Likes
This is a pretty well known competition and practice piece. I had to practice it as well when I was studying. I didn’t get anywhere near what Vladimir is doing here though… 
Edit: Its not all hammer ons, only all slurs, but both kinds
2 Likes
I don’t think Marshall was really making a criticism of Petrucci’s playing here, in either style or technique. My interpretation of his meaning here is that in modelling the Holdsworth type legato, this technique comes closest to that approach as opposed to articulated “rock pulloffs”. Marshall seems less smug to me than simply socially awkward - like on the autism spectrum. He could probably be more diplomatic, but I doubt he meant any personal offense to anybody that uses pulloffs lol.
you eviscerated his entire premise
I mean, Marshall’s results kinda speak for themselves - nobody was eviscerated on either side of the debate.
This is not a concept I was even aware of. It’s mind-blowing!! I’m not much of a legato player but am trying to incorporate more of it in my playing. This is something I will definitely delve into.
I think we could go back and forth on trying to read Marshall’s intent - I interpreted it as critical and a little smug, you didn’t, and since neither of us have insight into what he was thinking in that moment, we’re just speculating and there’s totally room for different interpretations. That’s cool.
But, I think what you pointed out in your response that really stuck me, is for all his talk about “Petrucci-style ‘rock’ legato” not being “real” legato, what he’s doing also doesn’t meet the textbook definition of classical legato that he’s criticizing rock players for falling short of. That, yes, what someone like Petrucci or Satriani are doing may not be classical legato, but neither is what Harrison himself is doing - both are only creating the illusion of legato, and that’s an awfully arbitrary line in the sand for him to choose to draw.
Again, though, that’s not to take away from his rather stupifying technical mastery of the guitar. It’s just a reason to, in the words of Zappa, shut up and play yer guitar, rather than get pedantic about what is or isn’t legato.
When I was a kid I was wondering why my brother called that hammer-ons/pull-offs stuf ‘legato’? It sounded not even close to my piano legato. But then I realised that guitar is not piano, and, surpsisingly, piano is not a guitar. Different disciplines - different terms meaning. It’s like the ‘law’ term in physics and ‘law’ in law practice. Kinda similar, but for breaking the law of physics they give you the Nobel Prize, whilst for breaking some federal law… well… ))
2 Likes
Marshall’s playing ability is not in question. But if he decided to start calling frets “shoelaces” his playing ability alone wouldn’t make his terminology correct. And I’m not even making any assertion about whether Marshall is using the term “legato” correctly, only that his ability to play has no bearing on whether his use of terminology is correct or not.
))
By the way, in russian the word for that metal piece and the word for a space between them are the same. Which leads to some confusions sometimes.
Offhand, I can’t think of a standalone English word for the space between the frets. In my early days on guitar, I didn’t even realize “proper” technique was to press the string as close behind the fret as possible without buzzing. I starting out thinking you were supposed to press halfway between the frets (and to some extent, still have a bit of a tendency to do that). I suspect many guitarists go a long time (or forever?) without learning that.
1 Like