Let's talk about hammer-ons and pull-offs.

This is a fret-hand technique, so it doesn't have very much to do with the picking hand. So I'm going to play the first note with the picking hand. But the second one I'm going to just activate with my fret-hand.

So we can use a hammer-on to play the note above, or we can use a pull-off to play the note below. Notice that you can see my hand when I do that if you want, which means my hand doesn't need it to do the motion. Once again, here is the hammer-on, and here is the pull-of. I just picked the string one time.

As you can see, they're basically the same but opposite. The only difference is a hammer-on is played by the force of the finger striking the string, but the pull off is played by dragging the string outwards slightly as you come off of it. You can't simply pull up, you have to pull to the side to cause the string to ring again.

We're going to practice with an E major scale on the open E string.

First, we'll hammer-on going up the scale.

It's also a good idea to try this with other fingers, but you get the idea.

Next, we'll do two hammer-ons going up the scale.

Okay, so let's try the scale with pull offs.

We can combine the techniques as well.

Now, we can do two pull-offs.

We can also make a lot of different combinations.

So practice these techniques to add some more interesting sounds to your playing. You can use this when playing a scale, a melody, or even chord progressions. So try it out for yourself.