Essential techniques for left & right hands

Hammer-Ons, Pull-Offs, and Slides

Hammer-Ons:

• You just take a finger, find a fret, and you hammer it on. That's why it's called a hammer-on.

Pull-Offs:

• Now, you also have what they call a pull-off, which is like this. You can check with the left hand.
• All I'm doing is taking my finger and just releasing it off of the string.
• It's sort of like a push-off too, huh? Push-off, pull-off.

Slides:

• Now you also have what is called a slide.
• A slide goes from one note to another note.
• Got that vocal feel, like you're singing.
• You can also slide down.

Combining Techniques:

• Another thing you can do is hammer and slide, sort of like an Albert Collins kind of thing, huh?
• You can also hammer and slide from the top down.

Rocking with the Left Hand

• Another thing you can do with your left hand is what I call rocking.
• Get yourself an E chord. This is your standard E chord.

Modification:

• Now, take this finger off and leave it like that.
• When you play and get the groove going, most people just hold that E chord.

Finding the Groove:

• What I want you to get a handle on is rocking. Hear that groove? That's a groove.
• That's like your heartbeat. I'll explain that in a minute when I get to the right hand.

Explanation of Rocking:

• The left hand rocking means I'm holding it down and then I'm releasing it just a little bit.
• I'm not taking my fingers off; I'm just kind of releasing it.
• So I get this percussive feel.

Vibratos vs. Worries

• Now another thing I want to talk about is worries.
• Some people call them vibratos, but I prefer to call it a worry because a vibrato makes somebody think it's got to go real fast.
• A worry is more like this.

Listening to Worries:

• Take a listen to the different notes that you hear.
• I'm playing one note, but there are more notes going on. That's because I'm worrying it.
• See this fret right here? I'm worrying it.

The Blues Connection

• Think of playing blues this way: If there is a note, let's say it is a nail on the wall, and you are a legit singer, a legit singer takes out a laser gun, aims at that nail, and hits it right square on the top.
• Now, a blues singer takes a tomato and hits that nail. That's the difference.
• That's why when you get that worry, you get that grease.

Bending Notes:

• You can also bend, which is a real vocal trick where you take one note and bend up towards your face.
• You gotta squeeze now and get that dry feel.
• Notice there are more notes inside those notes.

Expressing Emotion

• That's like vocal. It's like Albert King style.
• When you hear Albert King, people say he played the same five notes.
• Try and do that. It's very hard to do because he gets the notes that are in between the notes.
• This is available when you bend.

Bending Techniques:

• You can bend up, and you can also go from bending up to coming down.
• See that? That sounds good.
• You can worry when you're on the top and you can worry on the way up.
• It all gives that feeling, the feeling that you're trying to express, the feeling that you have.

Right-Hand Techniques

• These are some tools that you can use, and that's just your left hand.
• Now we're going to talk about your right hand. This is where the rhythm section lives.

Importance of the Right Hand:

• A lot of people don't spend much time on it, but I think it is the most important.
• I've had guys tell me that's where your personality lives.
• Everybody can know what's going on in their left hand, but your right hand is where it's happening.

Getting into Rhythm:

• Your thumb provides the bass.
• Earlier, I talked about your heartbeat.
• If you listen to a rhythm, it goes like this. Let me put it up here so you all can see it.

Understanding Heartbeat

• That's a good beat!
• But that's not like your heart.
• Your heart beats like this.

Shuffle Beat:

• One of the best beats in the blues is a shuffle.
• That's a shuffle beat right there.
• So you tell your thumb, "That's the beat we're going to do."

Creating a Groove:

• All of a sudden, you've got a groove going.
• Right now, you're just on one string, but you've got a groove going without even playing a single note besides that one groove.

Picking Techniques

• Now, you're going to take a picking finger.
• You have a choice of two.
• You can use this finger or that finger; I prefer to use this one because it's more comfortable for me.

Comfort in Playing:

• One of my rules of thumb in playing music is: Don't be uncomfortable.
• When you're uncomfortable, you're focused on that instead of making music.
• What's right is to think about making music and just be comfortable.

Whacking Technique

• Let's get to the right hand whack.
• You can check it out with my right-hand camera. Just check that whack I'm doing.
• I'm taking my thumb up and my hand up, knocking down while holding the chord to avoid hitting a bad note.
• This is similar to how funk bass players played in the 70s.

Incorporating Whacking:

• It adds percussiveness and drive.
• Now, we go back to the left hand.
• I'm going to take off this finger and use that special E chord.

Exploring Positions on the Guitar

• We're going to stay on this one chord and break the guitar into three positions: low, middle, and high.
• There are 14 frets, but three positions are more manageable.

Notes on the Guitar:

• What are these notes I'm using? Let me show them to you:

  • G
  • Open E
  • D
  • B
  • B flat
  • A
  • G
  • E

• Now, we need to find the same notes an octave lower.

• For example, we got G, that's open.

• Now let's go to E, D, B, B flat, A, G, and E.

Finding Available Notes:

• If it's available somewhere on the guitar, find where else it's available.
• That knowledge will help us as we move to the middle and high parts of the guitar.

Utilizing Learning Tools

• Remember, feel free to move that DVD controller around.
• Check the left hand, check the right hand, check the front shot, whatever works best for you.
• The great thing about DVDs is you can have a lesson anytime you want.
• If your partner is asleep, you can go down there at 3 o'clock in the morning, turn it on.
• And always, your teacher is in a good mood!

Continuing with Grooves

• So now we're talking about down here at the bottom using a one-chord groove.

• We haven't even started on the three chords yet, but all these notes are available on the one chord.

• They're also available on the two chord, which is the four chord.

• You need to be careful on the five chord, but we'll explain that later.

• Let's get a groove going and move on up to the top of the guitar!