Hammer on in Standard Notation

Last time in the “Guitar in Standard Notation” series, we looked at: the notes of the open strings (check out the link in the sidebar for where the notes are on the fretboard); fret positioning (i.e. which frets to play); and barring. Yep, all of these things can be written in standard notation!

This time we’re looking at legato- this includes: hammer-on’s and pull-offs, two handed tapping, and trills. We’re also going to look an slides (i.e. sliding a note up or down the neck to a new pitch).

Hammering On

Here is the typical way you’ll see legato written in musical notation:

See the curved line over the notes? That means “legato”, and in order to play this correctly, you’ll need to use hammer-ons and pull-offs. Here is the tab of the same thing:

e----------- B----------- G--5h7p5---- D----------- A----------- E-----------

So you’ll need to play the 5th fret on the G string, then hammer another finger onto the 7th fret of the same string, and then pull your finger off the 7th fret to sound the note on the 5th fret again.

Of course, the notation doesn’t say which frets to play on. It just tells you that it’s a C and a D note…so it’s up to you whether to play it as in the tab above, or like this:

e----------- B--1h3p1---- G----------- D----------- A----------- E-----------

…or like this:
e----------- B----------- G----------- D--10h12p10- A----------- E-----------

…as all of these notes will sound at the same pitch.

Trills

This is a trill:

When you see it’s symbol over a note, you play that note and then the note above and then the first notes again, then the note above…etc…really fast.

In tab you’ll see this “tr~~~” over the tab, or it’ll be tabbed out in full:

e------------------ B------------------ G-5h7p5h7p5h7p5h7-- D------------------ A------------------ E------------------

Tapping

Along similar lines, is two handed tapping. Well, when you think about it, it’s just the same thing as hammer-ons and pull-offs but with two hands, right?

Here’s how that looks:

Of course, because it looks almost identical to the first example here (still just a curved line over the notes), it’s up to you to decide to use tapping. Sometimes, though, there’ll be a “T” over the notes, or “tapping” will be written. The notes that you tap can also be written with a circle around the note head (the black dot bit).

Here is the tab to the above notation:

e-------------------------------------------- B--t12p4t12p7t12p4t12p7t12p4t12p7t12p4t12p7-- G-------------------------------------------- D-------------------------------------------- A-------------------------------------------- E--------------------------------------------

I know tab has it’s benefits and everything, but I know which one I’d prefer to read! The only real difference in reading the two is being able to tell which notes are written in standard notation. Apart from that they say the same thing.

Slides

Lastly, we’re going to look at slides. This is when you play a note, and move your finger along the string (still holding the note) until you reach a new pitch. Here is an example of that in standard notation:

Just literally a line in between the two notes, this is a slide up (towards the bridge) which you can tell because of the “/” line (and also the second note is higher). If it were a slide downwards in pitch (towards the nut) the line would look like this: “\”.

Here is exactly the same thing in tab:

e----------- B----------- G----------- D--7/9------ A----------- E-----------

So this one is fairly straightforward- it’s exactly the same symbol in notation as in tab!

OK, so that’s for this week’s lesson. Next week we’ll be looking at string bending, and how we write 1/4, 3/4 and 1 1/4 tone bends (read it here).
Rob.

August 5, 2011 at 4:11 pm | Music Theory | No comments