How to build LONG and FLOWING LEGATO Lines 

7:32 - In the future, everyone will be named Tom. 7:42-7:55 - A great nugget of truth!!!

This is excellent guitar playing my friend.The ligatos are so smooth and beautiful indeed.Your method of teaching makes you one of the best across you tube landscape. All your videos are worth watching and I am happy to be one of your followers. You're a great inspiration. God bless you for sharing your knowledge with the world. Thank you

The king 🤴 Of Tasteful And Elegant Legato John.

Applaud the rhythm exercise at ~18:00 or so. When I was hiring session guitarists, I found many struggled to go cleanly from quarter notes to triplets to sixteenths etc in the same passage without rushing (and not solely those shred masters who astonish yet not often in time especially at slower tempos). Can't recall having that experience with a bassist, but was common enough with guitarists that I got the sense they just didn't work on it as much as they worked on speed and tone. I suppose now people can just quantize it or something, but I liked how you taught rhythmic importance as part of this.

This is my first proper guitar lesson after 22 years of playing 😂 So very well explained John thanks buddy... I suppose it's better late than never 😂

What is in the water over there?!?! Every UK guitarist I stumble upon is BRILLIANT! Yourself included! So smooth and melodic!

Johns channel looks like its finally hitting some decent growth. One of my favorite players ive found on RU-vid keep it up man!

You're one of the most fluent soloists hands down ! Dig your playing big time !

Flippin hell. I only discovered your channel recently, from a Line 6 link somewhere, possibly with Tom Q involved. 🤔 This vid is absolute gold. The missing link for legato! My playing has improved and the vid isn’t over yet! Thanks so much 🙏

Great lesson! Thanks for taking the time to make these types of videos.

Thanks John. I’ve been playing on and off ( more off than on ) for almost 30 years and I’ve never been able to get legato. I’ve bought a couple of Toms legato comprehensive courses but they’ve obviously been more advanced than I can handle. You’ve distilled those concepts down. Really appreciate that.

Awesome and tasteful playing...Thanks

You’ve turned me on to melodic thoughtful legato. Very useful lesson, working on this is going to make me better for sure.

Excellent, useful tips here John. thank you!

Thanks for some fresh insight. I'm going to take these ideas and work on them.

Gambale's ChopBuilder is so challenging and inspirational. I really enjoyed your video and your explanations. Lots of helpful ideas here to reference. The smooth, but clear, tone in your B and E strings is amazing! New subscriber.

John! Thanks for the email with this list of lessons (this is kalimar). This is EXACTLY what I was asking about. Clearly I haven't watched enough of your channel

Great tips and awesome tone by the way! Obviously.

This is the best and clear teaching ived watch in yt!very helpful and humble teaching…❤❤❤ Thanks for sharing!godbless

This was an incredibly enlightening John, I learned quite a lot!

Thanks for this. Great exercises and ideas.

very usful practice ideas. Thank you very much!!

Very useful, thank you! I find these legato licks can easily run away with my fingers and getting out of a pattern gracefully is harder than getting into it!

Amazing that thanks John!

Congratulation John! From Brazil.

Super useful ..,gonna study these methods intensively..I’m a rock/thrash but legato runs sounds so great in the genre ..but since watching ur stuff and listening to holdsworth n satriani and other legato players over the years I always felt that type style was just out if my reach ..so I bought an American pro strat ..my first strat btw ..and I love it and it’s ease of play especially legato genre thanks very much for this lesson and all u do sir …your an inspiration ..and the Fender company thanks u 😂😂👍🏽🤘🏾

Love it!! I just dropped here looking for "legato line" in singing and .. the intro of this video just flooded my ears and sole! What was that?!

This is another useful video. I like it. While this kind of thing doesn't occupy a large space in my playing style (or rather intended playing style) It works very well as a rhythmic spice for any musical style. Also, I like the comment about Destiny's Child There was a video a couple of days ago where you played some more soulful stuff, which I found a bit surprising based on what I had heard previously from you. It was nicel I will make use of the ambient, legato, modal type of runs and effects that I hear so often from you , when I play atmospheric stuff in church.

Thank you, you are amazing!

Ear training/transcribing helps a lot with this kinda thing. For legato, Satch recommends only using the amount of pressure you need to sound the note. You can really let your fingers fly when you realize you don't have to press down very hard.

I always wanted a lesson on this, which is why i'm on your patreon. Really enjoyed this lesson! ps. appreciate the bits of humour and the text on the video!

I like the slide down into the note that you do in the outro jam at 22:18. I've seen you do that a few times, as well as some other little things here and there that really give your solos a lot of personality. It'd be neat to see a little video on it, and maybe if you have some more little tricks like that.

Excellent lesson, cheers!

Thank you! Tom is amazing (as are you) but his "lessons" are for people much more advanced than I am. I'm able to latch on to your concepts and apply them to my own style with practice rather than prayer :)

I remember when you were in Destiny's Child. I'm glad you're not bitter about how it ended. lovely guitar playing and pleasing deadpan delivery you only get from the UK

This is exactly how i want to be able to play

Super thanks for the great video and for the useful pdf at Patreon :)

LOL - I loved your early stuff in DC!

Fabulous stuff .... I can see many months of practice ahea! Just a thought to remind myself when I come back here .... practice some of these patterns with spaces in them (e.g 1 3 2 3 then onto next string .... as adding rhythmic "holes" and/or double length notes can be very interesting too :)

Thanks!

This is just the light bulb lesson for me as far as legato lesson goes...I've been stuck on running the same pattern for years lol

You know it's a good video when you have to quit watching it multiple times because you started practicing! I think an interesting concept I realised (kind of related to some of this stuff in the video) is that it's often a good idea to play patterns that are not the same as the subdivision you're playing. So if you are playing a pattern of 4 or 8 it will sound much cooler in triplets and patterns of 3 and 6 sound much better in 4. Same applies to playing quintuplets. 5 note pattern quintuplets are really "Square" but play a 4 or 3 note pattern and it's awesome. Is this something you've noticed as well?

I love to see your channel quickly growing. You’re currently my favorite channel to learn from on RU-vid, right next to Music Is Win. Do you have any favorite strings? I normally just buy whatever chon or polyphia tell me to buy, but I’ve never given any thought to it esp for legato

Thats hours worth of practice info right there. I notice people who do legato and fast picking well keep all their fingers close to the fret board at all times

Pure 🔥 from 11:00ish on !!

Looks simple and sounds killer, but very hard to execute. I guess you're right, I need three notes per string patterns.

I love how you play music

Hi !...great lesson and beautiful playing !...your way of playing is very unique and original !! I'm also a proffesional guitarrist and have always been a fan of playing legato, as you say,it helps for the phrasing. What's the name of the preset ?...sounds very nice and with a lot of sustain... I bought the Helix LT second hand,and later discover that there are some presets of yourself.... The guy must have bought some of your sounds ! Best wishes !

Great workout! Thanks!!!!!! Meanwhile, those Sire guitars are not easy to find. Apparently they sold out in most places. I wonder if the brand decided to promote itself with this overbuilt inexpensive guitars in limited quantities, but will change it's strategy after establishing the brand.

You're actually dead good mate. 👍 ( Not many I haven't heard). Check out 'Turregenius'. He's gone into Allan Holdsworth big time. He does repeat himself, all the time. He plays the same patterns over different chords. He also has avoid notes, ie; the 4th/11th on major chords. Well worth checking out.

hey.. i hv been following your channel for some time now. definitely learned and improved a lot.and i have a question. sort of 😅 it might sound stupid but i have seen many players play slower resolved phrases and then burst into legatos. so can shed some light on that. specially the starting choice of note. if it makes any sense 😅😅

How about a video showing how you get "your sound" seemingly regardless of guitar used.

Hi John, I know you have a link for the patches you use for your demos, but would you mind doing a video talking about your live give versus your recording gear for demo videos, and how you go about creating or searching for your patches as well as the backing tracks you use? You have great taste in tone!

14:54 Thanks for your insight into Legato. Playing 3 notes per string is hard especially down low on the neck. I was wondering if you are playing the major scale for the majority of this video? Obviously when you start or stop on a particular note it changes the tone which is what makes modes right? Anyway I’ll be joining you’re patron channel and I’m loving your sound. I have a long way to go to get anywhere as good as you but I’m going to try my best. Thanks again in 14:54

Liquid finger mobility!

Beatiful purple es-335 on the wall! What model is that??

Hi John. Can you help those of us who lack the ability to make long phrases with diatonic or pentatonic scales, without the typical effect of someone who just runs the scales up and down? In your videos, you have addressed this topic several times, but it would be great if you maybe could make two videos (one for diatonic and one for pentatonic) specific to the different patterns or ways to create sequences that do not resemble only practicing a scale. Thanks!

Two vids in a day! Is that backing track in the beginning available for DL / purchase? I’m real curious about the theory behind it. The tonal center isn’t quite clear to me. Still a blast to noodle over, though! 🔥🤘🏻

Thanks for the great guide John. I know you’ve said it before, but what is that big pick you use?

What do you think of the Mesa boogie mark 5?

Hi. How do you get your modeller patches to sound good through your JBL monitors? My fm3 sounds bad through anything with tweeters. Cleans are fine but any gain is fizzy spikey treble. Sounds fine through catalyst power amp in. I assume you have spkr emulation on your patches when you monitor with your JBLs. What's the trick?

Is there a synth that plays when u play …or is that you reverb

Single String Improvisation Class on Musicians Institute

Wat pedals??

quote 7:44 "what you practice slowly and what you practice routinely is going to be what eventually comes out in your playing further down the line, when you can play it fast" ... This is probably true, and I think there's a hidden danger in practicing playing scales very much. If you play scales so that they become your _phrases_ , then that's going to make you play very monotonous stuff! To avoid this trap and counter the dumbing effect of scales as phrases, you should practice a lot of licks, melody snippets, rhythms taken from good solos and songs, maybe even _poetry_ or wherever you can find rhythmically interesting material. In the beginning of this video, there's an example solo, which IMO is a tiny bit on the monotonous side what comes to rhythmic content. A few syncopated notes across barlines would certainly do no harm! There's certain truth in the slogan "THE NOTES DON'T MATTER" in this recent Open Studio video ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-rEdtUOGCCnU.html That's of course only a polemic statement that's required to get attention on RU-vid, but there's a good point behind it.

Destiny's Child would've been lucky to have you. Beyonce digs legato. She does it all the time.

I watched closely - so you are just picking the first notes of each grouping of 4 and when changing strings. Some people play legato with just picking when changing strings or not picking at all - just like Steve Vai did when he broke his arm. Interesting to see and to make up rules.

Destiny's Child were never the same following your departure. A bit like Dave lee Roth leaving Van Halen.

We’re you the blonde or the redhead in Destiny’s Child? What was it like?

Ok ok so you’ve mastered legato... but can you play potato?

Destiny's Child's never been the same after they dropped you.

why isn't this guy prime minister?

HAHAHA.

Destiny’s Child?🤣🤣🤣

I’m not a man easily impressed by musicians but I got to say, despite my initial hesitations, I do think that regardless of your background, the genocides in Uganda were not a good thing.

Too fast