Hammer-on's from nowhere

Hey there, i’m brand new here. I was just wondering what your guy’s approach to hammer-on’s from nowhere is? I’ve been really stumped about how to do it clean without a fret wrap, especially when doing it with the index finger. There’s always unwanted harmonics, even if I mute all the other strings.

1 Like

With little practice you shouldn’t have too much problems descending as the fingers are helping muting unwanted noises, regardless of the fingers you use. Ascending, that’s another story, you need more strength and you must use your picking hand to mute the lower strings as they are relieved. I think Rick Graham covered this topic on YouTube but can’t find the vid.

1 Like

I wrote quite a lot about hammers in the thread concerning Allan Holdsworth’s legato technique. My posts, and the thread in general might be helpful to you.

Assuming you are playing on an electric guitar, damping of all other strings other than the string being played should be sufficient to eliminate all unwanted noise. If you are experiencing issues with unwanted noise, I’d suspect your damping technique is not as comprehensive as you believe it to be.

If the unwanted noise is only in the unplugged sound, I don’t really think you should worry about it; there’s nothing that can really be done about it and nobody will hear it anyway. Hammering the string always results in exciting the harmonics on both sides of the hammering finger.

I don’t believe this technique is suitable for acoustic playing, as the noise of the string vibrating below the hammering finger cannot be eliminated without using some device to damp the open strings.

1 Like

I’d be interested in a quick demo vid to see what’s going on. Kind of easy to speculate incorrectly otherwise.

1 Like