Basic Guitar Techniques

Here is a quick explanation of the most common fretting-hand techniques used in guitar playing: bends, vibrato, hammer-ons and pull-offs. These techniques allow you to vary the sound of a picked note in various ways.

Bends

Bending a note allows you to change the pitch of the note. For any given fretted note, you can increase the pitch smoothly by up to three or four semitones (half steps). The type of strings and guitar will affect how easily you can do these larger bends, but on most guitars (acoustic or electric) you should be able to manage a two semitone bend fairly easily.

A bend is achieved by pushing the string across the neck after you have picked it. Let's say you want to play a note on the 5th fret of the top E string and then bend it up. Fret a note at the 5th fret in the usual way. Pluck the note with your picking hand, then start pushing the string with your fretting finger across the neck so that the E string moves towards the B string. (Normally, your fretting finger pushes straight down on the neck to fret the note - now, as well as pressing down, you need to push across the neck to bend the string).

As you bend the note, and the E string is pushed towards the B string, continue picking the string and you will hear the pitch of the note rise. Now, continue picking while you release the bend, and let the E string slowly move back to it's normal position. Now you hear the pitch of the note drop.

One other technique related to bending is where you bend a note up without picking it. Only when the note is bent by the right amount do you pick the note and then release the bend. This way, you hear the pitch of the note fall after it has started.

This is basically all there is to bending and releasing notes. With some practice, you will learn how far you need to bend the string to raise the pitch of the note by one, two or three semitones. Judging the amount you need to bend the note takes time but really makes the difference between a good and poor-sounding bend, so this is something you should practice. Try the exercises below:

Exercises

The idea here is to practise bending a note at the 5th fret so that the final pitch of the bent note matches the pitch of a note fretted at the 7th fret. In other words, you want to bend the note by exactly two semitones (half-steps).

Play the tablature example below - you alternate playing fretted notes at the 5th and 7th frets with a note fretted at the 5th and then bent up two semitones. Try to get the pitch of the bent note to be the same as the pitch of the note fretted at the 7th fret. Play the notes slowly.

NB: b = bend, r = release bend

  
E---5---7---5b7---5---7---5b7---------- 
B-------------------------------------- 
G-------------------------------------- 
D-------------------------------------- 
A-------------------------------------- 
E--------------------------------------

Now try something different. Instead of picking a note at the 5th fret and bending it up, you now bend the note without picking it, and once you have bent it by what you think is the right amount, you pick the note and then release the bend. When you pick the pre-bent note, it should have the same pitch as the note fretted at the 7th fret.

Because you don't hear the note pitch change as you bend it, this is a more difficult exercise, but worth practising!

  
E---5---7---7r5---5---7---7r5---------- 
B-------------------------------------- 
G-------------------------------------- 
D-------------------------------------- 
A-------------------------------------- 
E--------------------------------------

Vibrato

Vibrato is the effect where the pitch of a note is varied rapidly so it rises and falls in a continuous cycle (think: opera singers!). For notes that are sustained, you can get some extra expression into the note using vibrato. On the guitar, the effect is achieved by doing a series of small bends and releases.

Let's say you're playing a note at the 5th fret of the top E string. Pick the note and bend it up in the usual way. Now release the bend and let the string go back to it's usual position, now bend it again, then release again. You need to do the series of bend-release-bend-release smoothly and reasonably quickly. The effect you should get is a continuously varying ("wobbling") pitch.

Clearly, the depth of the vibrato (how far the pitch varies from it's normal value) and the rate of the vibrato (how quickly the pitch changes) can be varied by bending the note further each time, or by playing the bend-release cycle faster. As a rough guideline:

Vibrato depth: bend the note by a fairly small amount (less than a semitone)
Rate: aim to do a few (3-5) cycles of bend-release every second.

Hammer-ons

This technique allows you to play two or more notes for every one note that you strike with the picking hand. Start by fretting a note at the 5th fret on the top E string using your first finger. Pick the string with the picking hand, then move the third finger of your fretting hand down onto the 7th fret in a 'hammering' action. The idea is to move the finger down sharply onto the neck so that the note at the 7th fret is heard. So, you pluck the string once, but hear the notes at the 5th and 7th frets. The sound is different to that produced by picking both notes - the hammer-on qives a quick transition between the two notes and slurs them together.

You can play more than hammer-on at once. Try picking a note at the 5th fret, top E string, hammering on with your second finger to the 6th fret, and then hammering on to the 7th fret with your third finger. You should be able to hear all three notes clearly, even though only the first one is picked.

The basic hammer-on technique should be fairly easy, although it takes time to develop the good coordination between left and right hand that is needed for faster hammer-on effects.

Pull-offs

This almost the opposite of a hammer-on. Start with your first finger at the 5th fret on the top string, and your third finger at the 7th fret on the same string. Pluck the string to hear the note at the 7th fret, then pull your third finger away from the string in a sideways motion. Keep some downwards pressure on the neck with this finger so that when the finger leaves the string it performs a kind of pluck of its own, and you hear the note at the 5th fret. As with the hammer-on, you hear two or more notes for every one that is picked.

Exercise

Once you have got used to the basic hammer-on and pull-off techniques, you should be able to put together a whole sequence of hammer-ons and pull-offs so that you only need to hit the string once with the picking hand - all the other notes are sustained by the hammer-on and pull-off actions. Try the example below, which uses a hammer-on to the 7th fret, followed by a pull-off to the 5th fret, then another hammer-on to the 7th, and so on:

NB: h = hammer-on, p = pull-off

  
E---5h7p5h7p5h7p5h7p5h7p5h7p5-------------- 
B------------------------------------------ 
G------------------------------------------ 
D------------------------------------------ 
A------------------------------------------ 
E------------------------------------------

Try to keep an even rhythm and loudness for all of the notes. With practise, you should be able to keep this kind of sequence going almost indefinitely.

Last updated October 2011