Does this principle about finger pressure apply to guitar too?

Playing Technique
#1

I came across this video on youtube explaining that for playing piano, the amount of pressure needed to press down a key is more than the pressure needed to keep it pressed; meaning that proper technique (especially for playing fast) would entail using the minimum amount of force needed to press the note, and then further reducing that force to the minimum amount necessary to keep it pressed down.

Having been on a journey of trying to increase guitar speed, I’m wondering if this same principle applies. I’m constantly trying to remind myself when pushing my speed to play as lightly as possible with my fretting hand and only use the bare minimum amount of force to press the strings down. My suspicion is that for picked notes, there really is no “lighter pressure” to apply once you’ve fretted a note. It seems to me that if you were to reduce pressure from the bare minimum point you’d just get a buzzy note.

However, for legato playing I do think this principle applies. Since the string isn’t being picked, your fretting hand needs to apply enough pressure to swiftly hammer-on to a note and get it to ring out. Once it’s ringing, I find that I can relax the finger a bit further while still keeping a clean note. Of course this could just mean that I’m hammering-on with too much pressure to begin with. What do you guys think? Is it possible to hammer-on cleanly with absolute minimal pressure? Is it necessary to perfect this in order to play at extreme speeds?

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#2

It could be that having the finger very close to the string is best? The amount of force required to stretch the string until it touches a fret is very small; I suspect that anything slightly above what is required for good contact will suffice.

A piano key has a lot of travel and has to launch a hammer, perhaps fretting on a guitar is more like typing on a laptop with a linear spring?

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#3

You’re correct with regards to picked notes - as long as you’ve got the string actually in contact with the fret, the note will sound and not be sloppy; any excess pressure above what is necessary to keep the string touching the fret is wasted.

With regards to hammering on notes, it depends on what you’re looking for. If you’re trying to play fast electric legato lines without necessarily needing to accent any specific note in the sequence, you can probably get away with a “light touch” hammer-on because the pickups will pick it up. However, if you want to be able to play some notes louder than others, you’re going to need more force for those notes, and then reduce the pressure you’re using to hold the string to the fret until it’s just enough to keep it consistently touching.

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#4

I think at speed the idea of accenting a legato note by hammering on or pulling off a little harder probably isn’t feasable - at slower, more “phrase-y” speeds, maybe, but there’s limits.

I havent counsciously thought about reducing pressure after fretting while playing legato, but I think at speed this just kind of has to happen anyway as you’re muscularly pretty much immediately starting to transition the finger for the next note after it sounds (briefly, then moves on to the next hammered on note or just gets lifted all together on a pull-off). For slower lines or when you end a legato phrase, you’re almost always moving to vibrato, which that tends to dictate howmuch pressure you’re using.

I think really this is just a totally different use case, though, going back to the OP. Legato on piano isn’t a “technique” like it is on the guitar, where the mechanics of striking notes are different. On a piano, you still depress the key, whether it’s legato or stacatto. The difference is when you strike the next note, you allow the previous one to bleed into it a little by continuing to hold it, whereas on guitar the “legato” refers to the fact that there’s no pick attack.

So, the whole question of how much pressure you continue to use after fretting a note on a guitar in a legato line… it kind of doesn’t enter into the equation in NEARLY the same way it does on a piano, because continuing to hold the note isn’t a part of the technique.

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#5

I think the “light touch” approach is correct. Tom Quayle is a player whom I feel like I’ve seen do the accent thing on legato, and yet it certainly isn’t slowing him down. I think in my case I’m just using too much force period to press notes down, and I just need to work on keeping that hand relaxed.

#6

I wasn’t comparing legato on guitar to legato on piano per se. Just simply the motion needed to make a note happen on a piano. Ultimately both instruments need a minimum threshold of force to start the note. I suppose though on guitar there doesn’t necessarily need to be a more forceful action for hammering on; the basic fretted force should be enough. For me I guess it’s just a matter of training myself to only use that amount of force for legato.

#7

I think my point though was more the idea of holding or sustaining a note while playing legato on a guitar doesn’t even enter into the equation like it does on piano.

Guitar legato, you’re playing one note at a time and you’re free to release your finger fretting a note as soon as you move on to the next one. Piano, continuing to hold a note while you start to play the next, so they bleed together, is the entire technique, so it makes a lot more sense to think about how much pressure you use while sustaining.

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