Slurry Pull Offs/'Unfretting', Help!

Playing Technique
#1

Hi all,
So I’ve been drilling my picking for a few years now and have been making some progress, in no small part thanks to the CTC (thanks!)

I always thought my picking speed was the main thing holding me back, but now that that has caught up somewhat, I believe I have found a new problem hiding behind it… with my fretting hand.

I might phrase this a bit clumsily so bare with me…
If I am playing an ascending passage on a string, I seem to get by ok, coordinating my pick strokes with my fretting fingers as I add them to the fretboard. That said if I am playing descending it seems my fretting hand isnt as quick getting off the string, and that is when things are most likely to ‘slur’ and derail.

Has anyone noticed and overcome this with their own playing? Looking for practice approaches to help strengthen and quicken my ‘unfretting’ motion if that makes sense.

Hope everyone is having a swell and fine day, greetings from Brighton UK

#2

I had this issue as well, what worked for me was reading malmsteen’s autobiography, what he did a lot of was playing legato on single strings up and down the neck with out his picking hand getting involved. He also values his fretting hand a lot more than his picking hand as crazy as that sounds :slight_smile:

What I found is the string started to act as a guide, like rails, my movements got a lot steadier and intentional. Subtly using the string as guide to glide along. It’s a great feeling when it starts to work.

Work on 3, 4, 5 note sequence patterns per string on all strings, plugged in with and without gain, unplugged as well.

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#3

Nice, yea I have noticed that legato practice seems to help! Interesting about him valuing his fretting hand though makes sense. Maybe he had more natural fast twitch faculty with his picking hand to start with so it didnt feel as hard earned as his fretting ability.
I’m not a big YJM fan but would be certainly interested in his account of his journey through learning!

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#4

Another thing to play around with is to use only hammer ons, even for descending lines. Allan holdsworth did this. It’s tough but a good approach. It avoids the “smeared pull off” sound by avoiding it entirely.

You might find Hammer Groups — Practicing Guitar documentation useful to try out as you work on that technique. Take it small chunks at a time.

Cheers! Z