Some questions on both picking and fretting technique

[joebegly]

@Gumgo

Here’s a related question I’ve been wondering about for a little while: suppose you’re playing 3-2-1 on the B string followed by 3p2 on the G string. Or even 3p2p1. When transitioning to the G string, would you place fingers 2 and 3 both immediately, or would you only place finger 2 right before executing the pull-off?

More generally, how early do you “prepare” the pull-off-target finger?

I think the answer is “It depends”. Classical guitarists usually pull straight down on their pull offs, with the lower note already fretted. So they would need both fingers planted, then they do the slur. Granted, their speeds are far below the shred stuff most of the people on this forum are going for. At extreme speeds, there isn’t always time to do this, depending on exactly which fingers are performing the slur. Plus, that can cause hand sync issues since it wouldn’t be consistent between hammer ons and pulloffs. That’s why some of the elite legato players do all hammers, even when descending. There is some discussion of all that here:

Holdsworth's All Hammer-on Legato

I don’t know if this goes in this place because I will talk about legato. Recently I’ve discovered that the smoothness of Allan Holdsworth’s legato was because he only used hammer-ons, I was like WTF, really? Can someone explain some of this technique? And post some exercise. I still don’t understand this technique.