Brett Garsed - Rock Fusion: The Best Legato Technique Video to Date
Written: Jan 03 '04 (Updated Apr 07 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Will give you more dimension in your single-note technique!
Cons: Generally, not for beginning players. But you never know.
The Bottom Line: Potentially and entirely different dimension for your guitar playing.
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| alaskanway91's Full Review: Brett Garsed: Rock Fusion |
Brett Garsed downplaying his legato technique is like Carl Lewis downplaying his speed by telling you all he does is move his legs and moves as quickly as he can.
Brett Garsed Rock Fusion is absolutely phenomenal at introducing, showcasing and teaching the basics of legato technique. Legato is a style of attack using fingertaps, hammering and pull-offs with very minimal picking enabling sophisticated phrasing, speed, fluidity and clarity unmatched with flatpicking by sheer physics alone. If reading this conjures images of Van Halen you aren't even close. No disrespect to Van Halen, but his technical ability is a tip of the Garsed legato technique iceberg. If you have never been exposed specifically to this "school" of guitar perhaps popularized by Allan Holdsworth (A major influence on Eddie Van Halen by his own admission), this video will blow you away.
One of the strengths of this video is that Garsed comes across as genuinely encouraging, unpretentious and easy to understand. The value of this video is that even if you don't play pure legato, there is principles here to be applied everywhere in your technical arsenal whether you play rock, blues, smooth jazz or metal.
The actual mechanics of legato are not that difficult, in fact, having legato in my technique personally for over 15 years (although slightly different than his), Brett's statement about legato being more difficult to play slowly is true since there is a natural tendency to played at an accelerated tempo. To be fair, you aren't going to watch this video twice and play like Brett either since he is on an elite level technically. Here's a breakdown:
Example 1 - Garsed covers the basics which you will understand quickly. The "finger memory" portion of the technique takes a little getting used to. Garsed wastes no time be demonstrating the fact you can play 4 and 5 notes per string which opens up possibilities positionally in single-note technique.
Examples 3-5 - Covers more fundamentals with descending patterns and scales. Note the descending runs are a little different (and tricky) on right hand than ascending runs.
Examples 12-14 - Garsed begins to show some of the potential of this mind blowing technique using sweep picking and awesome positional phrasing that starts to bleed the parameters of the music's tonal center that he's accompanying ala Holdsworth. To really get things cooking, he uses the middle and ring finger of his right hand in addition to the pick producing incredible phrases reminiscent of Allan Holdsworth.
If this is starting to sound discouraging, not to fear for there is a happy ending! As mentioned earlier there are fragments of goodies here for everyone to use, it's just a matter of experimenting with what does and doesn't work for you. If you want to assimilate portions of his technique in your chops, you will work very hard. The point is there is something here for everyone and here are some tips to getting the most out of the video:
1) Find fragments you can use in your playing if you're a straight flatpicker. There are plenty in the beginning and later in more advanced solos, but be mindful of phrases within the extended runs.
2) If you have transcription software (with playback features), transcribe parts of the book you can use and learn by phrase or measure at a tempo that suits you. Garsed plays these phrases a little too quickly at times and making heads or tails out of these flurry of phrases can be harder than actually playing some of them. This is something you should have if you're serious about learning whether you buy this video or not.
As strange as this sounds, there is no way you would think a beginning player should try to tackle this stuff. Legato is a different animal all together. Some people just click with this technique and with others it is so fundamentally simple, they just can't get it.
I don't want you to misread what I am saying about legato. It isn't something you're going to learn in a week and it will require a lot of work even though Brett Garsed makes it look effortless. But in it's most fundamental state, it requires less synchronization (not less practice) than flatpicking. In flatpicking, the right hand and fretting hand have to essentially function as one which takes a lot of patience and practice which is why very few have it to the highest level. Legato makes playing quickly easier (that being relative) and sound smoother but you still have to know your fingerboard. In other words, just because you car will accelerate faster doesn't mean you know where you're driving. Studying some music theory (specifically tonality) and teaching materials like this can help you there.
Recommended:
Yes
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alaskanway91
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Location: The Great Northwest
Reviews written: 46
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