GuitarControl.com presents instructor Darrin Goodman with a killer easy pentatonic lick that uses the hammer-on technique. Be sure to get the tabs to go along with this free Easy Pentatonic Lick With Hammer-on Technique lesson and enjoy.
Introduction
Hey everybody how’s it going? This is Darrin with GuitarControl.com bringing you this video lesson and today I want to show you an Easy Pentatonic Lick With Hammer-on Technique that is just based on the first and second strings. So be sure to click on the link so you can get the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look what we got going on here with this Easy Pentatonic Lick With Hammer-on Technique.
Pentatonic Notes
All right, so for this Easy Pentatonic Lick With Hammer-on Technique I’m doing this in A, but it’s really easy to transpose it and move it around where you need it to be to accommodate whatever key that you’re playing in. So we start off here, we’re just playing the last four notes of the box pattern of the minor pentatonic scale, so that would start on the fifth fret because that is A, so the last four notes; so two notes on the B string and two notes on the high E string, it’s a step and a half. So each time we move up into a position we think of it as like this is the first note and this is the second note and then on the next string first note and this the second note of this position will be the first note of the next position and the second note of the next position will be the first note of the next position and so on and so forth and I’m using a hammer-on for this. If you are a beginner and you’re not really sure how to do a hammer-on and you don’t know really the technique and stuff, I’m going to go over a little bit, but if you really want to dig into it then I got another lesson here on the guitar control channel that I think you should check out, just check this lesson out here, it will help you with developing hammer-ons and pull-offs.
Picking & Hammer-on Technique
Okay so we start off I’m on the fifth fret of the B string with my first finger and I’m going to pick that and do a hammer-on to the eighth fret with my fourth finger. So for the hammer-on I’m picking once, pick here and then this note here I’m literally thinking about like you you’re hammering in a nail. I’m slamming that finger down so that way I’m hitting it hard enough that the string is smacking against the fret and it’s actually fretting the note without having to pick it. So like if I picked both notes they would sound like that, but a hammer-on sounds like that. Now you could play this and just pick every note if you like but I really like the way that it sounds, the dynamic that it gets with using the hammer-ons. Okay, so we’re going to do that shape 5 8 and then we’re going to go to the high E string and do the same thing. So now we’re going to move to the next position. So like I said before, note number two, which in this case is on the eighth fret, that’s where the first note of the next position will be and now we’re going to go instead of a step and a half we’re just going to go a whole step. So we’re going to start on 8, we’ll pick 8 and hammer to 10 and now I’m going to use my third finger and it’s the same shape on the high E string. Now we’re going to move to the next position, so again our second note started on the 10th fret, so that means our first note is going to start on the 10th fret, so now I’m going to go 10 12, so a whole step again and I’m on the B string and then I’m going to go to the high E and do the same thing. Now we’re going to move to the last position, so again our second note started on the 12th fret so we’re going to put our first finger there, that’s going to be our first note and now we’re back to a step and a half again, so we’re going to go 12 15 and you can use your pinky. Now I’m anytime I get above the 12th fret sometimes I’ll use my third finger just because the frets wires are closer together. So the same thing 12 hammer-on to 15 and then the same thing on the high E, 12 hammer-on to 15 and then just slide up a whole step to the 17th fret, because that’s an A, so we’re just going to slide back into the tonic. So the whole sequence just like that.
Now since I am doing the hammer-on technique for this, I’m picking with a down stroke on the B string hammer-on and then an upstroke on the high E and then when I move to the next position, same thing, down hammer-on, up hammer-on, down hammer-on, up hammer-on, down hammer-on, up hammer-on slide, just like that. Now you can take this idea and you can move it around into a different key, but you could also incorporate it into other licks, it’s really easy because it’s all out of the pentatonic scale just experiment around with adding in other types of licks. It’s fairly simple and sounds really cool, looks and sounds harder than it actually is and as I’ve said before I love that kind of stuff.
Conclusion
All right, so I hope you enjoyed this Easy Pentatonic Lick With Hammer-on Technique and you got something out of it. If you like the lesson be sure to give me a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below if there’s something you’d like to see covered in a future lesson by myself or one of the other instructors here at GuitarControl.com. Well that is all I’ve got for you today. Thanks for watching and have a great day.
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