Playing Techniques - Hammer-Ons & Pull-Offs

Hammer-ons and pull-offs create a more fluid feel to your playing. The technique is very simple. By picking the first note and hammering another finger down to sound the next, you create less 'attack' to the sound. This softer note mixed in amongst picked notes helps to vary the sound and allows you to play sequences of notes too cumbersome to be picked easily.

Try experimenting with the phrases created in Jamming Ammo, adding hammer-ons and pull-offs. Then try applying these phrases and techniques improvising over to Run To You .

You might find that Run To You feels too different to Paranoid to be able to use the phrases you created. If so, take it in turns to improvise lead to the riff of Run To You , using hammer-ons and pull-offs and create some new phrases.

More articles on Playing Techniques

• Setting the scene
• Hammer-ons and pull-offs
• Staccato
• Sliding Notes
• String bending
• Double String bends