Hammer-Ons & Pull-Offs

You don’t want to come down or hammer-on the string too hard, otherwise the note will go sharp. You also don’t want to hammer-on too softly otherwise the note may come out too quietly. Try to hammer-on just right so the note comes out at the same volume as the picked note, and watch to make sure you’re hammering-on right behind the fret. Practice this first half of the legato technique to get comfortable with it.

The second half of the legato technique is pull-offs. Put your first finger on the third fret of the D string again, but put your third finger on the fifth fret at the same time. Pick the D string so the note from the fifth fret rings out, and then pull-off that note using your third finger to lightly pluck the string with your fretting hand.

Just like the hammer-ons, be careful to pull-off just right. If you pull-off too hard, the note will go out of tune, and if you pull-off too softly, the note may not play at all. Keep a good balance so the note you pick and the note you pull-off have the same volume.

Go ahead with practicing these techniques. It’s okay if it takes weeks or even months to master hammer-ons and pull-offs, because it does take a while to develop these techniques.

Now let’s combine hammer-ons and pull-offs for the full legato technique. Head back to the same two frets we were playing. First finger on the third fret of the D string, pick that note, hammer-on to the fifth fret with your third finger, and right after you hammer-on, pull-off the note. So that’s a quick pick, hammer-on, and pull-off in a row, and once you have that down, you can keep alternating hammer-ons and pull-offs without needing to pick another note.

You now know the core of the legato technique. Being able to hammer-on and pull-off well saves your picking hand some work, and sounds much smoother as you play. Next, we’ll apply the legato technique to the minor pentatonic scale. If you’re just jumping in the Lead Guitar Quick-Start series here, I’d suggest heading back to the video where we learn the minor pentatonic scale.

When using the legato technique with scales, the aim is to use hammer-ons whenever you’re ascending the scale, and use pull-offs when you’re descending the scale. Looking at the minor pentatonic scale, you pick the first note of the scale and then hammer-on to the second. Because this scale has two notes on every string, you’ll always pick the first note and hammer-on to the second note. When you compare my playing in the video, using legato sounds much smoother than picking every single note.

Trying to play the minor pentatonic scale using legato may be difficult for you because it is a tough workout for your pinky, especially if you don’t have a lot of strength built up yet. Just keep working on it and your fingers will get stronger every time you practice.

Now let’s try descending back through this scale. On the high E string, you’ll need to have both your pinky and index finger on the string. Pick the first note with your pick and then pull-off to the second note. When pulling-off, there are a couple of thoughts on how to do this. You can continue to have both fingers planted on the string as you just did, or you can pick your first note and come down on the next note with your other finger quickly afterwards. Either way is acceptable, so try both and see which works best for you.

Work on the legato technique by practicing ascending and descending through the scale, and keep in mind, you don’t have to go all the through the scale before starting again. Feel free to mix it up by going up a few notes and back down a few. You should feel like you have a new tool to add to your playing skills, so work on this with the three scales you know so far – the major scale, major pentatonic scale, and the minor pentatonic scale.

The major scale will be more difficult than the others because the major scale has more notes, and some of the strings have two notes while other strings have three. Starting with the low E string, you’ll pick the first note and hammer-on the second note. With three notes on the A string, you’ll first pick, then hammer-on the second note, and hammer-on again for the third note. Keep that going all the way up the scale. When you’re coming back down the scale, the high E string will start with a pick, followed by two pull-offs.

The guitar is an ancient and noble instrument, whose history can be traced back over 4000 years. Many theories have been advanced about the instrument's ancestry. It has often been claimed that the guitar is a development of the lute, or even of the ancient Greek kithara. Research done by Dr. Michael Kasha in the 1960's showed these claims to be without merit. He showed that the lute is a result of a separate line of development, sharing common ancestors with the guitar, but having had no influence on its evolution. The influence in the opposite direction is undeniable, however - the guitar's immediate forefathers were a major influence on the development of the fretted lute from the fretless oud which the Moors brought with them to to Spain.

The sole "evidence" for the kithara theory is the similarity between the greek word "kithara" and the Spanish word "quitarra". It is hard to imagine how the guitar could have evolved from the kithara, which was a completely different type of instrument - namely a square-framed lap harp, or "lyre".

It would also be passing strange if a square-framed seven-string lap harp had given its name to the early Spanish 4-string "quitarra". Dr. Kasha turns the question around and asks where the Greeks got the name "kithara", and points out that the earliest Greek kitharas had only 4 strings when they were introduced from abroad. He surmises that the Greeks hellenified the old Persian name for a 4-stringed instrument, "chartar". The earliest stringed instruments known to archaeologists are bowl harps and tanburs. Since prehistory people have made bowl harps using tortoise shells and calabashes as resonators, with a bent stick for a neck and one or more gut or silk strings. The world's museums contain many such "harps" from the ancient Sumerian, Babylonian, and Egyptian civilisations. Around 2500 - 2000 CE more advanced harps, such as the opulently carved 11-stringed instrument with gold decoration found in Queen Shub-Ad's tomb, started to appear.A tanbur is defined as "a long-necked stringed instrument with a small egg- or pear-shaped body, with an arched or round back, usually with a soundboard of wood or hide, and a long, straight neck". The tanbur probably developed from the bowl harp as the neck was straightened out to allow the string/s to be pressed down to create more notes. Tomb paintings and stone carvings in Egypt testify to the fact that harps and tanburs (together with flutes and percussion instruments) were being played in ensemble 3500 - 4000 years ago.At around the same time that Torres started making his breakthrough fan-braced guitars in Spain, German immigrants to the USA - among them Christian Fredrich Martin - had begun making guitars with X-braced tops. Steel strings first became widely available in around 1900. Steel strings offered the promise of much louder guitars, but the increased tension was too much for the Torres-style fan-braced top. A beefed-up X-brace proved equal to the job, and quickly became the industry standard for the flat-top steel string guitar.

At the end of the 19th century Orville Gibson was building archtop guitars with oval sound holes. He married the steel-string guitar with a body constructed more like a cello, where the bridge exerts no torque on the top, only pressure straight down. This allows the top to vibrate more freely, and thus produce more volume. In the early 1920's designer Lloyd Loar joined Gibson, and refined the archtop "jazz" guitar into its now familiar form with f-holes, floating bridge and cello-type tailpiece.

The electric guitar was born when pickups were added to Hawaiian and "jazz" guitars in the late 1920's, but met with little success before 1936, when Gibson introduced the ES150 model, which Charlie Christian made famous.

With the advent of amplification it became possible to do away with the soundbox altogether. In the late 1930's and early 1940's several actors were experimenting along these lines, and controversy still exists as to whether Les Paul, Leo Fender, Paul Bigsby or O.W. Appleton constructed the very first solid-body guitar. Be that as it may, the solid-body electric guitar was here to stay.