Hey, how you doing? Justin here. Today I wanna take you through a beginner hammer-on
exercise; now, a hammer-on is a technique, where we play one note and hammer our finger
down, so that we hear a second note, without having to pick it again, okay?
That is the idea of the hammer-on technique. Now, it's quite useful for things like
playing fast scales but the reason we're checking it out is 'cause it's also really
good for adding ornamental notes to chords, which is something we're gonna be checking
out next lessons; so this is kind of something to get your fingers used to the
idea of that, before we put them actually into practice. So this is an exercise, it's
a little bit dry but it's a really good one. You're gonna find it pretty tricky I suspect.
I want you to start here with your first finger in the 5th fret of the thickest
string, and I want you to play that note with a down pick, and then hammer this
second finger down in the 6th fret on the same string, okay? If you just press
it down, nothing will happen; you'll mute the string; you have to hammer it, with
the aim that it's gonna have to be accurate, and you're gonna have to use the tip of your
finger in exactly the right spot, and really hammer it down. Now we're gonna
be using that pattern, first finger, second finger on the thickest string and then the
same thing on the 5th string, and then the 4th string, and the 3rd string, 2nd string,
thinnest string, and then back; still hammering and I'm not trying to go
backwards yet; it's called a 'flick-off' or a 'pull-off' and we'll be talking about
that later, and after you've done that, we are gonna try and do the same thing using
the second and third fingers, which is going to feel very very awkward! Okay? So we'll
play with the second finger and hammer with the third finger; some of you are gonna go
like this and it's gonna be completely off in the wrong places, or you get a no note.
Don't worry about the first few sessions, it's gonna feel very hard but we're doing
the same thing, moving it down on to the 5th string, then the 4th string, 3rd string,
2nd string, thinnest string and then we'll go back down; I'm making this look pretty
easy but I can guarantee you, if you wanna have a bit of a laugh, go and check out
NITSUJ trying to do this; it's no way near as successful, and then the next up, last
one for most of you, is gonna be third and fourth fingers, so third finger; it's tough to
do that with your right hand; it's been ages since I've done this exercise.
Left-handed, this one is very difficult, okay? So third finger, little finger, third finger,
little finger, third finger, little finger. If you get through all of that, you
only got a minute's practice, but if you through that, you could do first finger to
third finger as hammer-ons, and if you still got time, you could do second finger to fourth
finger, which is, for most people the hardest one. Second finger, fourth finger..
hammering the little finger down. So this isn't an exercise to go crazy on; something
you, I'm sure, are gonna go like, "I could do that for 10 minutes; it's really good
for my fingers". It is, at later on you might choose to do an extended version of this
exercise but for the time being, I've just scheduled it for 1-minute each practice
session, which should be enough to prepare you fingers for the stuff we're gonna be
doing next lesson. You don't need to go crazy on it at this stage. It's about accuracy
and strength much more than speed, so if you find that you're getting through all of
those finger combinations, it means you're going too fast and you'll be better off
slowing it down, doing it really accurately and strongly; really think of it like a
hammer; it's hammering there. It's not pressing. You wanna try and get that 2nd
note as loud as the 1st note, if you can. That's probably asking quite a bit at this
stage; still in the beginner's course, right? So don't be expecting it to be like
banging, the 2nd note to be banging down, it wants to be accurate, strong and aiming
for that 2nd note to be as strong as the 1st one, if you can. That, you can also
help that by picking a little softer as well; you don't wanna pick real hard and
then hammer softly; you're better off doing it the other way round; picking softly and
hammering it down hard as you can. This is a really great exercise for developing both
finger independence and strength, but don't overdo at these early stages; it is just
a warm-up for things to come.