Hammer Ons and Pull Offs

Hammer-On and Pull-Off Exercises

Below is an exercise that will not only help you with hammer-ons and pull-offs, but also help develop your overall left hand technique. Even though this exercise is written in tablature format starting at the 1st fret, you may want to play this exercise a little higher on the neck of the guitar. So consider the numbers that you see as the fingers you should use, rather that necessarily having to play this in the 1st position.

Each hammer-on and pull-off combination should be played at least 3 times. Of course more repetitions are better. You should also practice this exercise on strings 2 thru 6 as well. See a video demonstration in the computer version of this lesson. In the video I play this with my first finger at the 5th fret.

Hammer On Pull Off Excercise

Hammer-on and pull of exercise with open strings

The next exercise is the same concept as above, just utilizing open strings.

Open String Hammer On and Pull Off Exercise

Trills

A trill is just a rapid succession of hammer-ons and pull-offs. Try playing the above hammer-on and pull-off exercises only as trills. Just pick one time, and then just repeat the slur between the 2 notes as quick as possible.

Multiple Note Slurs

Slurs are not limited to just 2 notes on the guitar. You could have multiple consecutive hammer-ons, pull-offs, or various combinations of both. If you see multiple notes under a single arc, you will need to play all of the notes while only picking the string once.

The exercise below uses a hammer-on, pull-off combination. You can also try the same idea with any 3 notes on a single string.

Multiple Hammer Ons and Pull Offs