Good morning, left hand!
(10 Oct 02)
Hammer-Ons
Ok, the basic concept of hammering-on. Below, there is a basic exercise to get into it. First, we play the C, and then we hammer on to the D. You hammer on with your ring finger. Hammering on in this case means: You let your finger kinda fall onto the string at the 7th fret, thereby sounding the note without picking it. Just whack it onto the string at the 7th fret.
Make sure the note is loud enough. It feels weird and is quite hard in the beginning, cause you tend to hit the other strings accidentally, or maybe you don't hit the string hard enough, so the note is not loud enough.
Try this: Pick the C (5th fret), but don't pick it too hard. Then, hammer on to the D (7th fret) and try to get that 2nd note to be as loud as the previous picked note. Both notes should be about equal in volume.
This is a basic concept that Brett Garsed (who has a killer-legato technique) introduced me to at the GIT. Sometimes you want the picked notes to stand out, as an accent, but to get the full, flowing effect out of your legato-playing, try to make sure that the hammered / pulled notes are as loud as the picked ones. When Brett does it, you really can't determine which note is picked and which is hammered on, you just get one big stream of notes. Sounds great, like a sax.
Now, this concerns both newcomers to the legato-technique, as well as advanced and even pro-players:
1. Whenever you practise and work on legato-stuff check and compare the volume of the picked notes and the ones played legato-style! As I said, sometimes you want the picked notes to stand out, but let's for now try to have them at equal volume. You can later switch between both regarding on what sound you want.
2. Check how much strength you use. Especially in the beginning you tend to whack the notes too hard, using too much strength for the hammer ons and pull-offs. This is natural, and sometimes it's good because it makes the notes ring clearly.
BUT: if you relax your hand and try to limit the use of strength to the required minimum (=enough strength to sound the note, but not too much... just as much as necessary ), you'll save strength, and you'll be able to relax and maybe even speed up more, while getting a smooth even sound.
In the beginning, I was really WHACKING those notes. I then watched videos of dudes like Joe Satriani... his hand looks extremely relaxed when he plays, he hardly uses any strength at all even when playing legato.
It might take years to relax that way, to really find that balance, but you can speed up the process if you pay attention to how much strength you really need to use, and to use only that amount.
Even seasoned players might wanna take a look at their legato-playing to see if they can still improve some (relax some)...
OK, let's take the exercise above a bit further now...
Above you see 4 separate exercises, ranging from rather simple, first exercises to a run through a C major scale on all six strings.
Measure 2: This is our first exercise, taken one step further. We play part of an ascending pentatonic scale (C Major Pentatonic), picking the first note on each string, then hammering on to the next. Try applying this to all the pentatonic patterns while keeping an even volume of picked and hammered notes.
Measure 3: Here we play a short sequence out of a pattern of the E Minor Scale (the scale that wouldn't die... inside joke here). Here we need to hammer on 2 notes after we pick the first, then we move to a different string.
Left hand fingering would be: Notes at the 2nd fret are fretted with the index finger, notes at the 4th fret are hammered on with the ring finger, and the notes at the 5th are hammered on with the pinkie. Try different patterns and sequences to get all your fingers to work equally...
Which leads us to measure 4, which is an ascending C Major scale. This is already advanced hammering, and demands a wide stretch on the E6- and A-string. Again, try different patterns and scales to use all possible finger combinations. You may wanna start in the upper areas of the neck, where the stretches aren't as difficult. Later, you can move down.
One thing that I really wanna point out as very important: Use a metronome and start out slow. Make sure all notes are exactly in time. Just like with sweeping, using legato can cause some timing-problems, where i.e. the notes aren't evenly distributed between the beats.
Maybe, if you have a drum computer or sequencer, you wanna program a beat that uses something like a bass drum-sound for the beats (1-2-3-4) and a high hat for the actual sixtuplets we're playing here... so it goes... Bass-Hat-Hat-Hat-Hat-Hat-Bass-Hat-Hat etc, counting the notes you are playing... This will help you to improve your timing.
I did something similar when working on the Moto Perpetuo... I had a stick-noise marking the 1-2-3-4, and a high hat counting 16th-notes. Later, I programmed the whole "Moto Perpetuo" into the sequencer, using a piano-sound, so I was playing it in unison with my sequencer, which made it easier to check my timing.
OK, those were rather "melodic" exercises for our hammer-ons. Get to some chromatic exercises, focussing on the "mechanics" (we had those for picking, too, remember?).
Measure 1: A chromatic exercise, ascending, using the first three fingers. Always pay attention to the pick attack in comparison to the hammered notes, and check your timing.
This exercise is just displayed up to where we get to the D-string, of course you should continue up to the high-E-string. Then, either move the pattern up one fret or play the same thing from the high E back to the low E, THEN move on (High E-string: 1-2-3, B-String 1-2-3 etc.)
Measure 2: Now it's fingers 1,2 and 4 (index, middle, pinkie). Another variation.
Measure 3: 1-3-4, obviously
Measure 4: 1-3-5 Here is where the stretch comes in again.
You certainly can play those exercises in a different position at first, to avoid those wide stretches until you are comfortable with it. Move all those exercises chromatically up the neck and down again, until you really feel comfortable with the technique. Then apply those mechanics to scale patterns again. Use them in a melodic context.
All this is material to help you make up your own exercises. It will take a lot of time to develop accurate and precise hammer-on-technique, but you'll get there. Let me skip to an advanced exercise.
This is one of my trademark-runs, an excerpt of the guitar solo-spot I play live ( i.e. with Perpetuum Overdose ). The key is E minor, and we move through the differen patterns (you can see that most clearly towards the end, when we move up the neck on the B- and E-string).
Take your time with that one, raise the tempo evenly and slowly. Make sure all notes are at an even volume. Once you can nail this one at a slow tempo, speed it up. I think you'll be able to hear that really cool, flowing legato-sound (as opposed to the sound of this played with all alternate picking). Every time you change the string, you pick the first note. Which is a typical thing for this kinda lick. If you feel comfortable with that one, try hammering on the first note...
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