Left Hand Technique for Absolute Beginners

Description

Does the left hand do anything else?

Finally, the left hand fingers can also initiate sound on their own by techniques called hammer-ons and pull-offs. A hammer-on involves lifting one (or more) of your left hand fingers high enough to then literally "hammer" it down onto the string (right behind a fret!) in order to create a sounding note. A pull-off involves lifting one (or more) of your left hand fingers off a fretted string literally with a slight "pulling" motion in order to get the string to create a sounding note. Often, hammer-ons and pull-offs are used immediately after one another, creating a trill.

With enough practice, all these things become the automatic motions that form the basis of a guitarist's technique.