Pull offs

DeeTeeDeeTee Frets: 764
I'm going through all the basics of my playing again and trying to fix poor technique. I'm on pull offs at the moment. In the past I've basically done the reverse of a hammer on and allowed the amount of gain I use to make it "sound." Obviously, that's poor technique and won't work when I dial back the gain.

Thing is, I'm not sure whether what I'm trying to do now is correct either. I know I'm meant to be using my fretting hand finger to "pluck" the string. When I'm fretting the note for the pull off, I find that I'm placing my finger slightly higher up, getting ready for the pluck. Instead of the tip of my finger, the note is fretted with the flesh just behind the tip.

Is this going to cause me issues further down the line? If I'm taking the time to relearn, I want to get it right now rather than having to relearn again in a few months. All help gratefully received!
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Comments

  • RolandRoland Frets: 8590
    When moving in to play a note I don’t want to think “I’m going to play a pull-off next so I need to position my finger differently”. If you do position differently then it means you’ve got to learn a parallel set of movements for slides, bends, and vibrato. So I’d aim to use the same finger tip positioning throughout.

    The difference between acoustic and electric playing is that on an acoustic guitar you often play adjacent string open, and you’re happy to leave unplayed strings un-fretted. Whereas with an electric you’re often muting adjacent strings with left and right hands to prevent unwanted noise. So playing acoustically I tend to use finger tips, and playing electrically I mostly use the pad behind my finger tip. I say mostly because there are times, such as playing chords, when I have to use tips rather than pads to let all the strings ring.

    To pull-off I move the finger sideways towards the next string. That next string doesn’t ring because it is muted by the underside of my left hand index finger.

    So to answer your question: using the pad for pull-offs isn’t going to cause a problem further down the line, but not using the pad for other notes might.
    Tree recycler, and guitarist with  https://www.undercoversband.com/.
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  • BranshenBranshen Frets: 1222


    0:34 is a great example and practice for pull offs. I'd say definitely dont rely on gain, u should be able to make the sound clean with no gain!
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