Some of you have asked me how to do a hammer on guitar, so this lesson is going to address that.
A hammer on is very simply hitting a guitar string without plucking or picking it at the same time. So you’re just using your left hand for this one. It is a fairly simple technique, but you can use it in some very advanced ways once you’ve got the hang of it.
Hammer on guitar riffs sound pretty cool, and you can also use hammer ons to throw in chromatic passing notes all over the place.
Definitely something worth practicing and mastering…
This guitar lesson is a pretty basic one, but hopefully it still contains some useful tips for you.
I wanted to talk briefly about ‘sliding’ on your guitar… I’m NOT talking about using a ‘slide’ on your guitar, in the sense of putting a metal or glass tube around your finger… that would be a very cool topic for a different day.
However, today we’re going to look at how you can slide between notes, perhaps as a way to get into a riff, or to get out of a solo, or for whatever your brain can concoct as being a cool idea.
Strumming always seems to be an issue when you’re starting out playing guitar. I’ve done a couple different lessons on strumming before, but I though this time I would back things up to just about as basic as we can get.
If you’re struggling with your strumming, I recommend practicing with a metronome.
For learning basic chords and strumming patterns, Jamorama is a pretty good place to start. Click here for my review of Jamorama.
Don’t feel bad about keeping it basic -- make sure you can master a strum before making it more complicated. The worst thing you can do is always be attempting to do more than you’re able, and thus never really playing in time. Rhythm needs to be built slowly, but accurately and precisely.
Personally I love just grabbing my guitar… and noodling.
I’ll pick a key, whatever strikes my interest at that moment, and start noodling just for enjoyment… and often times, I’ll end up coming up with a cool progression or something that could be turned into a song.
This lesson will give a few of the nuts and bolts that can help you build a framework for creating progressions or songs on your own. You need to know what guitar chords work together, and you need to know what scale you’re working with, and you need to have some idea of how those work so that you can use them to start getting creative.
