How To Play Hammer-ons Lesson

How To Play Hammer-ons

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  • Hi GMC!

    In this lesson I'm going to show you how to play the hammer-on technique. This guitar technique is one of the first ones you should learn as you'll be using it a lot! I'm also hoping this technique will bring smoothness in your playing, something which we struggle with when starting. Hammer-ons technique is used in both rhythm (for spicing up chords) and lead playing (for expressive phrasing).

    This technique is not hard to get started with and we'll go step by step. In this lesson you'll also find exercises for practicing hammer-ons. Please do the exercises and practice hammer-ons enough as they will be a base for "pro sounding" playing in the future when you start working on your tone and expression. Since the technique, although hard at the very beginning, seems to be doable to most people after a certain amount of practice - I have noticed that it sometimes gets forgotten or not practiced enough and later on when the need for some more advanced techniques or playing concepts arises (such as playing fast runs or legato), there are issues with timing and sync. My advice: just practice the movement and technique itself at the beginning and then try to incorporate it immediately in songs and other stuff you play on the guitar for fun. It will pay off big time in the long run!

    Example lesson used in the main video: Schenker Style Hammer-ons

    From this course:

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