(guitar music)
- All right what's happening guys,
my name is Gina and this is the technique
of the week.
So thanks for tuning in.
Let's talk about a couple techniques today.
Let's talk about something
that we would call trills,
which is like a series of hammer-ons and pull-offs.
We'll go through and do like a little refresher
on what hammer-ons and pull-offs are and all that.
And then let's look at some bends
and just like some good ways to measure your bends
and make sure that they're not too flat,
not too sharp,
and all that good stuff.
So let's start in good old E pentatonic.
(plucking the guitar)
Maybe you know the scale already,
or maybe you haven't checked it out yet,
but we'll check it out together.
Let me turn off all this fuzz and distortion.
(plucking the guitar)
There we go.
All right, let's do an E pentatonic scale.
So I'm gonna go on the 12th fret on the low E,
and I'm gonna go 12, 15
(plucking the guitar)
and then 12, 14,
(plucking the guitar)
12, 14,
(plucking the guitar)
12, 14,
(plucking the guitar)
12, 15,
(plucking the guitar)
12, 15.
Let's play that a couple times, all right.
Let's play that through.
And let's use something called alternate picking.
This is the third technique we're throwing in.
Alternate picking is when we're gonna start
on a down pick.
And then our next note is gonna be an up pick, right?
This is awesome.
This is an awesome thing to practice.
So we're gonna go down, up
(plucking the guitar)
12, 15,
(plucking the guitar)
12, 14,
(plucking the guitar)
down, up, down, up.
(plucking the guitar)
All right.
Practice that you're gonna get really good at like,
just hand eye coordination and dexterity.
So practice alternate picking
through this pentatonic scale through any scale,
whatever you're working on.
And so now we got that down.
Something cool to practice
when you're practicing your scales,
just to kinda keep it interesting
and keep yourself engaged.
Try some different techniques,
try instead of just playing a scale to a metronome,
try playing the scale to the metronome
but using like hammer-ons and pull-offs, right?
So let's talk about what that means.
A hammer-on is when, let's see,
I'm gonna use my index finger as like an anchor.
So my index finger is gonna anchor down this note.
In this case, it's gonna be all the notes
in the pentatonic scale.
So I'll start on the 12th fret on E.
So I got my anchor there.
And then I'm gonna use my pinky
sometimes I use my ring finger
but it's really good
to practice this stuff with your pinkie so
that you build up your strength
and then down the line,
you're not like oh man,
like I neglected my pinky
and now I really need it.
So let's practice it with our pinky.
So I'm gonna have this anchored down here
on the 12th fret
and then I'm gonna pluck the note.
I'm gonna first turn the volume up.
(plucking the guitar)
So I'm gonna pluck the note
and then I'm gonna push down on the 15th fret
with my pinky, right?
So I'm gonna...
(plucking the guitar)
So it's only one pick, right?
One strike, and I'm gonna use the,
the sustain from that pick
to hammer-on the next note,
which is the 15th fret, right?
(plucking the guitar)
Let's do our whole scale now.
This whole E pentatonic scale with hammer-ons.
(plucking the guitar)
There I am.
So we're just doing one pick strike,
and then we're gonna use the sustain from that
to get our next note in, right?
So we're getting two notes
for the price of one pick.
And then to pull off,
we're gonna take that note that we hammered-on to,
and we're just gonna use our pinkie strength
or our ring finger,
wherever you happen to be,
we're gonna use our finger strength
to pull off back to the note
that you're anchored down on.
So in this case, again,
we're gonna do 12, 15.
So...
(plucking the guitar)
So I hammer-on.
(plucking the guitar)
And I'm gonna pull it off.
(plucking the guitar)
But my index finger is gonna stay anchored, right?
(plucking the guitar)
All right.
Let's try the scale doing hammer-ons and pull-offs.
Let's do something like this.
Let's do.
(plucking the guitar)
All right.
So it's just one pick.
(plucking the guitar)
12, 14 on A one pick on the D string 12th fret.
(plucking the guitar)
All right.
So already we're practicing a scale
but it feels more musical, right?
It feels a little bit more creative.
It's not just like, oh my god,
I'm playing a scale.
I don't wanna do this.
So now we're gonna add in what we call a trill.
So we're going to do a hammer-on
and pull-off but we're gonna just kind
of repeat that motion.
We're gonna build this momentum
and get this trill action, right?
(plucking the guitar)
I'm gonna do this on the 12th fret on the G.
I'm gonna trill from 12 to 14.
(guitar music)
All right.
So go ahead and play your E pentatonic scale,
doing all trills.
Let's check it out.
(guitar music)
Cool.
Now it sounds like a lick,
it sounds like something a little bit more tangible
than just a scale, right?
All right.
Let's check out some bends
when we're doing a bend like say I wanna do one
of these guys.
(plucking a guitar)
All right.
That's still an E pentatonic
and I'm bending the 15th fret on the B string.
So what I wanna do is bend the 15th fret so
that its pitch matches the 12th fret
on the high E string, right?
So we want this note to go from here.
(plucking the guitar)
We wanna bend it up a whole step in pitch, right?
So whole step in pitch is going
to be the high E like the 12th fret
on the E string.
So I'm bending the 15th fret on B
to match the pitch of the 12th fret
on the high E.
So what I like to do is I'll put my index finger here
on the 12th fret on E,
or just like whatever pitch point of reference,
I wanna get my bend to,
I'm gonna put my index finger on that note,
as like a good point of reference.
And then I'm gonna put my ring finger on the 15th fret
on the B string,
and right behind it,
I'm gonna put my middle finger so
that I have some extra strength when I'm pushing
that string up, right I gotta pushing it up,
towards me, towards the lower strings
on the neck, right?
And I have this index finger anchored here on the 12th fret.
(plucking the guitar)
So I'm going to strike both the B string
and the E string at the same time.
So without the bend,
it's gonna sound like this.
(plucking the guitar)
All right.
So I got 15 on B12 on E.
(plucking the guitar)
And then I'm gonna push
that D string up towards me right?
And I'm still gonna strike both the B
and E strings at the same time.
So I'm gonna strike
and I'm gonna push my middle
and ring finger up,
here we go.
(plucking the guitar)
So you can hear the pitches match, right?
You can hear the bend,
come up and match that,
that note on the high E string.
So this is a really great tool
because if you're trying to bend,
without this point of reference,
it's not gonna sound as thick and heavy, right?
Cause it's just like less going on there's less notes.
You're not gonna have that point
of reference either.
So...
(plucking the guitar)
You could under bend,
it's a little flat.
You could... (plucking the guitar)
You could over bend,
make it really sharp,
which sometimes it's cool
maybe you would want that sometimes.
But typically we'll get a nice clean bend,
we wanna match pitches here.
(plucking the guitar)
If you listen really closely,
you can hear the frequency below it
kinda dip down like kinda like
when you're looking at a tuner,
and you see it's like,
the frequencies are coming up,
and then when we hit that green,
we're right in the middle, we're right in tune.
(plucking the guitar)
All right.
Same concept, if I wanna bend on the G string,
I'm gonna hit the 14th fret on G
cause we're all in E pentatonic here.
And then my point of reference is gonna be the 12th fret
on B, right?
So I'm gonna bend 14G,
I got my ring finger
and my middle finger behind it,
and then I got my index finger anchored on
this 12th fret on the B string so...
(plucking the guitar)
You can hear the pitch match.
(guitar music)
Cool do some bends.
Yeah!