Hammer-ons from 2nd to 4th finger (3nps context)

[flaggiani]

Hi all, when hammering on from the 2nd to the 4th finger (with the first finger fretted too in a 1-2-4 finger run) I notice that my hand tenses up and my little finger sticks out and has to travel quite far to hammer-on.

Ironically, I seem to get away with it fast legato runs (but I still have some tension) but when I am playing slow and deliberately, the tension and timing are even worse. Strangely, I don’t have this issue at all with 1-3-4 finger runs.

Slow and deliberate:

Slow and deliberate

Fast:

Fast

I don’t know if the pinky sticking out is normal until I increase the strength of the fingers and so I just need to be patient, or whether I need to completely reevaluate my basic technique. I know that I’m supposed to play with the tip of the pinky, so maybe I need to start doing that to fix this? But when I try to play with the tip of the pinky, my pinky seems to lift right up as soon as I hammer-on with the second finger and it just feels totally unnatural.

Attempting to play with the tip of the pinky (very bad and feels unnatural!):

Trying to play with tip of pinky

Thoughts? Any particular things I can do to fix this? Thanks!

[joebegly]

Hi!

I always direct people with fretting concerns to @Tom_Gilroy’s excellent post(s). This one should help you:

Videos on fretting principles

On @tommo’s recommendation I’ve decided to re-post this video from my book thread to the Show and Tell category, so that it might be viewed by more of the community. This video introduces an important gripping concept that to my knowledge, has not been discussed in depth in previously available guitar instruction. [Grip] If there are questions about this concept I will answer them here. I intend to make short videos highlighting some things I look for when studying a player’s fret…

I think the bend in your wrist looks a little too flexed, and there are times where your thumb drifts so that it’s right opposite your middle finger. This can cause some tension that force other fingers to go out of whack

Tom’s videos will show you some options that help keep all of your joints and tendons functioning more optimally. Nice playing though!

[Gumgo]

I’m no expert on fretting technique by any means, but if you only have the issue with certain patterns and not others, it seems likely that it’s just an unconscious habit that you developed a while back (for whatever reason) and has stuck around simply because you haven’t spent time trying to break it.

I haven’t had that specific issue, but I did have a bit of “flying finger syndrome” a while back. One thing that helped was to play the problematic patterns very slowly and deliberately, focusing all my attention on only raising my fingers the minimum required distance. Basically try to keep your pinky stationary after it comes up the necessary minimum distance. It was pretty difficult at first, and initially it felt like I was repeatedly raising and lowering my pinky tiny amounts rather than keeping it in place, but eventually it started to smooth out.

I still don’t have perfect minimum movement, but it’s better than it was. Maybe I should do that exercise again for a week or so.

On a related note, I’ve always found it interesting that minimum pinky movement is often highly encouraged (and I certainly see its use) but I also see quite a few great/fast players whose pinkies shoot way far off the fretboard.

[joebegly]

@Gumgo

On a related note, I’ve always found it interesting that minimum pinky movement is often highly encouraged (and I certainly see its use) but I also see quite a few great/fast players whose pinkies shoot way far off the fretboard.

Yeah…sometimes the effort it takes to keep the pinky from moving isn’t worth the payoff And a lot of times that payoff is just aesthetic, or to satisfy some dogma that’s been jammed down our throats for years. John Petrucci’s pinky flies all over the place and I don’t think it’s holding him back much.

The other side of the coin is if there is in fact excess tension that’s causing other issues.

[flaggiani]

Thanks for sharing! Out of interest, how long did it take for it to “smooth out”? Did you solely work on that exercise so that other things didn’t interfere with the muscle memory you were trying to acquire?

[flaggiani]

Thanks, I’ll take a look at this! You wrote: “there are times where your thumb drifts so that it’s right opposite your middle finger”. That is interesting because looking back at the video I see that that mostly happens on the higher strings, and it so happens that the higher strings are where I feel the most tension.

[flaggiani]

I watched this and was blown away. 13:20 onwards was particularly relevant to me. I just tried slow hammer-ons with fingers 1-2-4 using his hand posture and, although it does feel a little odd, the proof is in the pudding as they say and I immediately noticed that I had less tension and more control. I’m definitely going to watch the other videos from this guy.

Particularly eye-opening was his debunking of the whole “keep your fingers perpendicular to the fretboard at all costs!” mantra.

Thanks again!!!

[joebegly]

Yeah, Tom is the man

My favorite post of his is this one:

Efficient Digital Cycles

I have been preparing a post about the left hand postures and fretting strategies I use in my playing, after reading through the following thread: That promised post is still in preparation, and I will present it when I’m satisfied with it. In preparing that post, I watched through several instructional videos and CTC interviews again. While re-watching Shawn Lane’s Power Licks for the first time in a while, I realized something about his fretting sequences that I felt was extremely interes…

And he has some videos that go into more details here:

The Fastest Lane - Video Lessons on Efficient Fretting Mechanics in Shawn Lane's "Power Licks"

It was suggested by our moderator @tommo that I come up with a title that more clearly reflected the content of my posts so they may be found more easily in future and which which may draw some more attention. The title I’ve come up with feels like clickbait to me, but I think it serves those ends specifically. I hope the content merits the lofty title. I present a series of videos on the concept of Efficient Digital Cycles, which is a principle I’ve discovered which underlies most of Shawn Lan…

Once you get those postures feeling comfortable I’m sure the concept of efficient digital cycles will unlock some great speed for you. Paired with all of Troy’s groundbreaking work, none of us have any excuses for playing slow any more well, unless there is some physical injury of course. Otherwise, freak speeds are available to the masses now.

[Gumgo]

I definitely didn’t practice it in isolation, and I think I only focused on it for about 2 weeks. It was similar to other muscle memory sorts of experiences - usually each time I started practicing, it would feel awkward again and it would take a little while to “lock into” the correct feeling. But that initial period got shorter over a few weeks.

After working on that, my pinky wasn’t magically fixed in general. However, when I happened to notice that it was flying up excessively, it was a lot easier to fix than before (since I knew what a more controlled pinky felt like).

[flaggiani]

Excellent, I’ll check these out! Thank you!