Legato on Acoustic

[Andrew Chung]

I wanted to post this in the lesson comments for lesson 22 — the alternate picking exercises, but for some reason, the comment field is gone.
Anyways, does anybody have tips for doing hammer-ons and pull-offs on steel-string acoustics? All of these lessons are more tailored towards electric guitars, but I’m not yet at the level where I feel I’d be justified in getting an electric. Granted, my Yamaha FS800 is a great guitar, but it’s an acoustic. Doing hammer-ons and pull-offs on electric guitar almost seems like cheating because you have the added sustain from the pickups to smooth out the sound. On acoustic, you have to deal with the rapid decay. And therein lies the problem.
How can I improve my hammers and pulls to minimize the decay and even out the volume between the two notes? I especially struggle with finger 1 to finger 4 hammer-ons (but I imagine everyone does). Thanks!

 

[Ed Seith]

Hi Andrew! A few things to unpack here…
1. Hammer-ons and pull-offs on acoustic. It’s important to note that how hard this is and how uneven it sounds is a direct result of the guitar, not the player. When you see an acoustic player able to do great legato runs and stuff, you have to accept that they are running that acoustic guitar through an amp with fairly heavy compression on it, which is how those notes are able to ring out. It is a limitation of the instrument, not the player.
2. It’s not “cheating” to do them on an electric guitar. It’s a technique that simply works better on an electric guitar. Tapping percussively on the body for a beat or “drum”-like sound is a technique that works on acoustic, not because it’s “cheating,” but because it’s a more acoustic-specific technique. You need to think of legato the same way. It doesn’t work very well at all on acoustic without a lot of electronic signal processing.
3. You’re always “justified” in getting an electric guitar. There’s no test, no evaluation, no graduation ceremony. If you have the money and the desire, get yourself a nice electric and an amp – just do your homework to find what you like.
4. It all comes down to STRENGTH and CONTROL. If you happen to get quite good and hammers and pulls on the acoustic, yes, you will be a BEAST at them on the electric, but it’s not absolutely necessary to keep the two separate, especially if it’s killing your pride of accomplishment or motivation.
\m/

 

[Dominik Gräber]

Nothing to add to Captain Ed’s post

 

[Andrew Chung]

Ed,
1. Thanks for the assurance. I’m glad to know that this reflects less on my ability as a guitarist.
2. The point you reference here was honestly halfhearted. I played the violin for 6 years, and of course, legato on that instrument is a piece of cake. Disregard that point, I guess.
3. I know I could have chosen to start on an electric, and I will eventually buy one. My initial choice came from knowing that electric guitars require slightly more nuance in playing than acoustics and I wanted to have less to focus on at once so I could just learn guitar first.
4. This issue hasn’t been killing my pride. Like I said above, I’m just glad to know that my struggles don’t reflect poorly on me. I’ve been moving right along, keeping the difficulty in mind, and moving onto memorizing the pentatonic scale patterns.
Thanks for the great feedback! Rock on!

 

[Jak Angelescu]

@andrew I’ve been meaning to comment on this but I haven’t had the time until now. I can relate to this situation on so many levels. First thing, I’d like to say though, is these lessons aren’t actually “tailored to” or “geared towards” electric guitars. Everything (for the most part) you see on here can be done on an acoustic. I’ve watched Syn do them numerous times, even without an amp! But I will DEFINITELY say, that an amp helps. The pinky (fourth finger) is naturally the hardest finger to work. On the hand, it’s the weakest of all the muscles and the ability to “fire up the nerves” to make it move are not as “woken up” as the rest of our fingers because we don’t engage it as often as our other ones. *Source, my friend is a medical massage therapist who works with a chiropractor*
As someone who has done classical guitar studies, you don’t want to solely work finger strength. You’ll want to incorporate finger separation techniques as well. This will help “fire up” the nerves in the finger joints to help teach finger independence, thus increase strength in each individual finger.
I’m going to link you to a a tutorial I did for Hail To The King intro, where I demonstrate a minor fraction of these exercises I received from my classical guitar work. I used them to help me play the HTTK better, maybe they’ll help you as well!
Lastly,
Performing pull-offs with the pinky is NOT an easy thing to get. Make your hand muscle on that side is prone to soreness and fatigue, so be sure to rub it out, stretch the hand and take adequate breaks when practicing pull-offs. But ideally, I personally believe pulling off is the same regardless if it’s electric or acoustic, the acoustic pull-off is just more difficult.
I hope this helps!
I talk a little in the beginning but I get to the exercises pretty quick. Syn said they were really helpful for learning the intro