The hammer on and pull off

Over my years of teaching I’ve found a lot of my students seemed to be lacking in two often used technical areas, the hammer on and pull off. While these may be among some of the first things most guitarists learn, they are far from simple. These techniques require a very precise and clean execution in order for them to be used to their full potential.

A hammer on is where you hammer down onto another note without a pick attack. You need enough force to actually sound the note as well. A very simple example would be this:

|------------------
|------------------
|--------------0h2-
|--------------0h2-
|-0h3-0h3-0h2------
|------------------

Here you simple pick the open A string and come down on the 3rd fret with enough force from your finger to sound the C there. Remember, you want to hit it with enough force to be sounded. Don‘t pick the C here, your finger will create the sound. Unless musical notation dictates otherwise, a hammer is an instant thing. There’s no delay. You pluck that A, then go right to the C by a hammer on.

Fingering is up to you, as there is no real right or wrong way. I would use my middle finger for the single notes and my index and middle for the two note hammer on if I were doing this, but that’s just my way of doing it. Most important is what’s comfortable for you.

A pull off is where you play a note with your pick and pull your finger away with enough force to sound the note below it. You need to sort of flick your finger off the string to get it to sound. It should be a quick motion with small movement. You don’t need to go overboard. You want to pull the finger off while maintaining some pressure, in order to get a nice sounding note afterwards.

A basic pull off pattern would be like this

|-12p10-------------------------------
|-------12p10-------------------------
|-------------12p10-------------------
|-------------------12p10-------------
|-------------------------12p10-------
|-------------------------------12p10-

For any pull off, you want to position your fingers on both the first note and the note to be pulled off to. So in this example, you would fret the 12th fret of a given string with your ring finger and fret the 10th fret with your index finger. With both fingers in position, pick the string, then by pulling off your finger allow the 10th fret note to sound. You want to try to have it be somewhat near the volume of the picked note as well. Remember, no further picking is needed after the initial note is played.

While this isn’t a difficult thing to understand, it can be hard to get a nice clean sound when trying them. I recommend playing with your amp on a clean setting. Too often people try things with distortion first. While I’m a player who mainly uses distortion myself, playing the later examples clean will enable you get get a nice clean attack and have a perfectly sounded note. Distortion can hide errors that can detract from the overall sound qualities of some techniques.

When hammering, you want to hit the hammered note with the tip of your finger, right at the center. Ensure that you don’t let your finger roll, as this can somewhat mute the hammer on. You also want to be sure that your nails are trimmed up. If they’re too long, they’ll impede you from hammering on properly, which can lead to buzzy sounding hammers. You want the hammer to be powerful enough to sound the note, but not so powerful that you bend the note. I’ve noticed students hit too hard and actually bend the pitch of the note up slightly.

I see hammers and pulls as an important part of good guitar work. They can make a passage sound nice and fluid and give a different overall aspect to a piece. Some of these exercises I’ll share with you are pretty easy. Some are actually fairly complex. Remember the key here isn’t speed. It’s more about precision and sounding the hammer or pull cleanly. As your skill increases, so will your speed. So there’s no need to worry about that now.

Before I get to the examples, another thing pull offs and hammer ons are good for is sounding chord tones. You can hammer and pull do different notes in a chord for different flavors. It’s a fairly easy way to change up an otherwise basic chord. You can also hammer or pull off to more notes than one as well. And you can get some crazy hammer/pull combinations going on as well.

These examples can be played at any speed. Try these clean at first. Once you feel you’ve got it down, try adding some overdrive. It’ll sound a lot cleaner if you do it that way.

Examples 1 a-c show different ways to change up chords. The little ~ means to just let the notes ring out.

Ex. 1a.
|-0~~~
|-0~~~
|-1h2~
|-2~~~
|-2~~~
|-0~~~

This just takes a basic E major chord and with a hammer, turns it into an Esus4 chord. Use your pinky to hammer onto that A on the G string.

Ex 1b
|-0~~~
|-2p0~
|-2~~~
|-2~~~
|-0~~~
|-----

Here is a basic A major chord. You pull off to create an Asus2 chord. The tricky part here is not muting either the open B string or open E string when you pull off.

Ex 1c
|-----
|-9p7~
|-9p7~
|-9p7~
|-7~~~
|-----

This again is an E major chord, but when you pull off 3 strings, you end up with either a inverted Dadd9 chord (DF#AE) or a F#maj7#5 inversion (F#ADE). Both groups of notes could be considered either or, depending on what you want to call it or what the music piece would identify it as. It seems hard, but doing this cleanly isn’t too bad. It does require some practice to get all the notes to sound clearly.

So you see how you can change up chords or even move to entirely different ones simply by doing a hammer on or pull off.

Ex 2 combines an ascending hammer on and a descending pull off

|-----------------------5h9p5------------------------
|-------------------5h7-------7p5--------------------
|---------------7h9---------------9p7----------------
|-----------7h9-----------------------9p7------------
|-----0h5h7-------------------------------7p5p0------
|-0h3-------------------------------------------3p0~-

Ex 3 alternates between the two

|-----------------------------------------------------------------------7h9p7h8p7h10p7-
|---------------------------------------------------------5h7p5h6p5h8p5----------------
|-------------------------------------------3h5p3h4p3h6p3------------------------------
|-----------------------------5h7p5h6p5h8p5--------------------------------------------
|---------------3h5p3h4p3h6p3----------------------------------------------------------
|-5h7p5h6p5h8p5------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ex 4 is just some chords played using some hammers and pulls

|--------------3-3p2~-----0~~~----0~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|-----1--------3-3~~--0h1-0h2~----0~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|-------2-0h2~-0-2~~------0~~~0h1-1~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|-0h2-----0h2~-0----------0h2~----2p0h2p0h2p0h2~
|-0h3----------x----------0~~~----2~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|--------------3------------------0~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ex 5 takes a descending major scale and adds in some hammers and pulls along with a few slides thrown in. Some people call a slide a pull, but to me there is a difference. A slide has no extra finger motion for an even sound and the second note sounded is softer than it would have been with a pull off.

|---------------------------------------------------------------
|-15h17p15\14h15p14\12h14p12\10h12p10\8h10p8\7h8p7\5h7p5\3h5p3~-
|---------------------------------------------------------------
|---------------------------------------------------------------
|---------------------------------------------------------------
|---------------------------------------------------------------

The trick here is to not let the high E ring out as you pull off the notes. This is just a D major scale.

The final example is something I came up with tonight. It’s not really much of anything really, I didn’t work this out beforehand. It’s just a thing I’ve been tossing around in my head. This isn’t as easy as the others. It’s got a few taps and a harmonic tossed in.

A tap is when you take a finger from your picking hand and you hammer it down on the strings. Usually, it’s the middle finger of that hand. You can keep ahold of your pick that way. You want to come down hard enough to sound a note cleanly. The 24th fret harmonic is performed with the fretting hand, not the picking hand. Since you tap and add vibrato to that D with your picking hand’s middle finger, you need to reach around and touch the string above the 24th fret (or where that would be if you don’t have a 24 fret neck). The last hammer is just a straight hammer to the C. You don’t play the open string, you just hammer to that C and slide to the D to end it.

For the symbols, they are

B = bend T = tap
+ = harmonic
v= vibrato
~ = sustain that note

|-----------------------------------------------------------------------15b-15b-
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|------------------------------------T--------T--------T--------T---------------
|-------------------0-4p0-0-5p0-0h7v-12p9p7h9-12p9p7h9-12p9p7h9-12v-24+---------
|-0-2p0-0-3p0-0-5p0-------------------------------------------------------------
|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

|-9h12p9------------------------------------------------------
|-------------------------------------------------------------
|--------12h14b16r14-12~--------------------------------------
|------------------------14p12/9h12p9/7h9p7/4h7p4/2h4p2-------
|-------------------------------------------------------h3\5~-
|-------------------------------------------------------------

So as you can see, these techniques can be used for quite a few different things. But remember that in order for them to really be effective, play them cleanly. Now try coming up with some on your own.