"Slur Study in C - The ligado exercise by Carulli to strengthen your left hand..."
This work by Carulli is an excellent way to practice your left hand slur technique.
Carulli
was born in Italy in the same year as Beethoven (1770), he became one of the most popular and loved classical guitar composers and players of his time. Indeed, that love extends right up to the present day as new generations of guitarists "find" his music and make it their own.
Slurs, sometimes known as ligado, are played from note to note (up or down) with the second note being played by the left hand finger only.
This piece, being in C Major, means you don’t have to worry about sharps or flats and can just focus on the task at hand – playing slurs. You’ll need to focus your attention anyway because there are actually 37 slurs in this slur study.
The slurs consist of both hammer- on’s & pull-offs. You’ll notice in this little video below that the actual technique for hammer-on’s is to give yourself some distance (about ½ - 1 inch) to make the slur effective.
Similarly, with the pull-off you need to "drag" the string slightly downwards to give it that "snap" feel and sound. When you put these two techniques together you have the trill.
The complete trilling technique on guitar consists of ligado or "slur" movements both up and down.
To download your own PDF copy of the music just right click and "Save Target As" for windows or click on the link and print the PDF file in the new window. There is both normal notation and tablature for those that want/need it.
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