Hello and welcome back! In these guitar articles I am going to be going through several techniques to do with playing the guitar. I know I say this a lot, but the objective of all of these guitar articles is to help you become a better guitar player. Becoming a better player is all about practice.
If you take lessons, you are quite likely to already know all of this, but make sure you still read on in case you have missed something in your lessons. For those who don’t take lessons, read on and this is guaranteed to improve your playing, and to make sure you are doing everything right.
Hammering on and pulling off are one of the most basic, yet effective techniques in playing the guitar, it is very highly likely that in every advanced song you play, there will be hammer ons and pull offs. In a solo, they are a necessity in order to make the solo sound more smooth and planned, rather than making it sound like you are playing random notes as fast as you can.
To do a basic hammer on, play any note on the guitar, let’s go with an open E string. Once you have picked the open E string, let it ring for a bit, and then, with force but not like you are trying to poke a hole through the neck, press on to the 2nd fret. You should then have the sound of the 2nd fret on the E string ringing, so you will have played two notes, but only picked the string once.
On a tab, that would look like this;
E|—————–
B|—————–
G|—————–
D|—————–
A|—————–
E|——–0h2——
Congratulations, you have just learned your first technique. Once you can do this example, try it again, but with your first finger on the 2nd fret, hammering on to the 4th fret with your 3rd finger.
On a tab, that would look like this.
E|—————–
B|—————–
G|—————–
D|—————–
A|—————–
E|——–2h4——
Ok, so now you can hammer on, it is time to learn to pull off. A pull off is when instead of making a note that is higher than the original, without picking again, you produce a note lower than the original. One thing you need to know about this before you start, in order to not get into bad habits is that you don’t just take your finger off, you pull it off downwards, so that it pings the string to produce the note, this way you can play for much longer losing no volume without picking than if you simply take your finger off.
Let’s start by doing the opposite of the first hammer on example. Place your first finger on the 2nd fret of the E string and pick the string, then, pull your finger downwards off to make it ping, so itplays the open E string, which in a tab, looks like this;
E|—————–
B|—————–
G|—————–
D|—————–
A|—————–
E|——–2p0——
Now you can do this, lets try it higher up, and again, the opposite from the 2nd example of hammering on this time. Pull your 3rd finger off to make the sound of the 2nd fret, like this;
E|—————–
B|—————–
G|—————–
D|—————–
A|—————–
E|——–4p2——
Congratulations! You can now properly hammer on and pull off. The next lesson will take you through how to play chords, and make your own little song.
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