Understand the Functions of Hammer Ons & Pull Offs for the Guitar

Series Summary

The guitar has been around for nearly 5,000 years, developed from even more ancient instruments akin to the sitar, it has been inspiring audiences since its first chord was strummed. It is the primary instrument involved with many genres of music including country, blues, flamenco, rock, and pop, and has been celebrated as one of the most expressive instruments in the world. Whether blending acoustic harmonies on a classical guitar or shredding solos on an electric guitar, the importance of the guitar to 20th century music cannot be ignored.

In this free video series, our expert Stephen Haediges will teach you how to play the guitar from a left handed persons perspective. Stephen will show you how to do hammer ons and pull offs in a variety of different ways. He will show you how to incorporate hammer ons and pull offs in an assortment of guitar licks, how to incorporate chords with your hammer ons and pull offs, and how to play descending scales with hammer ons and pull offs. He will even show you how to use tremolo picking and the neck pickup to get better tone and sound out of you guitar.

Video Transcript

"Next a popular technique I'd like to show you in rock lead guitar playing is hammer ons and pull offs. Now, I've showed them in several other licks I've been playing in other segments used in conjunction with tapping or with arpeggios and many other type techniques used for lead guitar playing in rock. Basically a hammer on is where you're playing for example on the G string I'm playing the second fret A to B and instead of picking both notes, I'm going, so you don't have that other pick sound. You're getting a more subtle sound. And then when you're pulling off I could just go from B to A. Pick the first note and just literally pull my finger off to the first finger on the A note. So, it would be, for hammer on. For pull off. And a good technique to practice is to build the nimbleness of your fingers, to simply go. Keep going till you feel comfortable with it. Keep it going as long as you can to where it starts feeling, where you feel a little sore. If you're not feeling any pain you're not getting any gain."