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!
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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.
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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.
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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 )
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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
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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… ))
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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.
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