If you have heard players like Joe Satriani or Alan Holdsworth, then you have witnessed truly breathtaking legato technique (better known as hammer-os and pull-offs). Having good legato technique will help balance out your picking technique. When you want that aggressive, in-your-face sound, then stick to your picking technique, but if you want to play smooth, and fluidly, then legato technique is what you want.

In this exercise, we will be playing a simple repeating pattern using hammer-ons and pull-offs. It is about as basic as it gets as far as legato goes.

Here we see the familiar area of the fretboard which many of my exercises fall in (I will be sure to move my next set of exercises around more!).

Play this one til your fingers are numb and fatigued. You'll see what I mean. You'll reach a point where you just can't move your fingers anymore!