Jack LeLane, on his 70th birthday, pulled 70 boats, each with 7 people, 7 miles in the open ocean.<\/p>\n
You have to be in great shape at any age to do that.<\/p>\n
When it comes to guitar, that ocean can be a sea of notes, or a fast passage, or a tough stretch.<\/p>\n
Whatever you encounter in your music, you will deal with it much more effectively if you are in shape and have the moves to navigate any obstacle.<\/p>\n
That’s where these “slurs” come in.<\/p>\n
In addition to being an expressive device to create certain feels or moods, they are great for the hands.\u00a0 \u00a0And slurs can get you powerfully buff as quickly as any exercise on the guitar.<\/a><\/p>\n Slurs go by many names. Some people call them ascending and descending slurs. They are also called hammer-ons and pull-offs<\/strong>. \u00a0In Spain, they are sometimes called Ligado.<\/p>\n Whatever you choose to call them,\u00a0certain little techniques and tricks<\/a> make<\/span>\u00a0them more effective and sound better, while building the strength in your hands and improving left-hand finger independence<\/a>.<\/p>\n A slur is when you play one note with your right hand, and then the left hand sounds another note (without the right hand playing again). This happens often in classical guitar music and is one of the tricks we can use to play fast passages<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the real beauty of slurs lies in their ability to whip you into shape and transform the left-hand<\/a> into a lean, mean, articulating machine, and in less time than anything else I have found.<\/p>\n Let’s go through the steps to do both ascending and descending slurs.<\/p>\nSlurs on the Classical Guitar<\/h2>\n
Ascending Slurs (a.k.a. Hammer-ons) on the Classical Guitar:<\/strong><\/h2>\n