Hammer-on and pull-off
Advanced technique exercises

The series of exercises that we will see in this section are designed for ligatures, taking advantage of their characteristics, both from a tone and velocity point of view. To perform these exercises, you should already have a good mastery of ligature techniques. If this is not the case, return to the previous page, where you can practice the hammer-on and pull-off techniques.

Ex. #1

A series of ascending hammer-on's to create a lick in the minor harmonica scale, whose tone is given by the note that is found at the fifth fret. In this example, the scale is A minor (lick on the first string). Repeat the phrase played in the first bar on all the strings and also try to move to other zones of the fretboard, obviously considering the scale changes.

Ex. #2

Similar to the previous exercise, but also using the pull-off. You can see its development on the second string. Always transpose on all the strings.

Ex. #3

In this exercise you can see how to check the execution of the ligatures on a three note per string major scale fingering. As you can see, the picking is down even though the notes are ascending, which makes the touch and the sound more fluid. You can work on this technique using the three note per string scale.

Ex. #4

Horizontal development of a major scale on a pair of strings, using the three notes per string system. This allows you to obtain a repeated scaled sequence with a continuous change of the starting note. The hammer-on is done on the second and third notes of every six sixteenth.

Ex. #5

A very particular phrasing built on a pentatonic scale. Notice the continuous change of the pickings that, if you accent, gives the phrase a very interesting sound. Even if the entire sequence is in sixteenth, the rhythmic execution is quite easy.

Ex. #6

In this exercise you will find a series of four notes in ligature played in beat on the movement. This is ideal for inserting typical harmonic sequences. In this exercise, in G major, the first three degrees of every modal scale related to that chord are played.