Hammer Groups¶
Summary: Work on fretting hand issues by reducing consecutive notes to a single chord (effectively playing those chunks at infinite speed), and then play them as a lightning-fast arpeggio by offsetting each note extremely slightly. ☆☆☆☆
Hammer Groups are groups of notes that can be hammered simultaneously with your fretting hand, like a chord. You then “slow it down” to a very fast speed by slightly offsetting the contact time of each finger, keeping the time interval between each finger drop as accurate as possible. Try different fingerings and positions to sort out the most comfortable one for your hand.
Example¶
Note
Every note in these examples is a hammer-on.
Here’s the G minor arpeggio from the Gigue, BWV 1004 Violin Partita no. 2, J.S. Bach (fingerings are below each note):
We can take any part of it that contains notes that we can fret simultaneously, for example:
The above section uses each fretting finger once, so we can depress all of these notes as a chord. We can lightly hammer-on all of them as a unit, and “bounce” up and down on the chord to ensure our finger positions are comfortable:
Bouncing the group
Now, if we very slightly offset the time at which each subsequent finger hits the string, we’ll effectively be playing the arpeggio extremely fast:
Hammer group
(At this point, I’m most interested in the rhythmic evenness of the group. I’m doing this on an acoustic, and sounding this solely with hammer-ons isn’t realistic, so this is all prep work for picking this arpeggio. If on an electric, this might be sufficient to sound the notes. Rhythmic evenness the most important thing; without that accuracy, it doesn’t matter how fast you play it, it won’t sound great.)
You might want to do each pair of fingers separately first, before joining all four:
Finger pairs
Play around with the tempo, slowing down if needed to double-check your placement and accuracy. Hammer each note very lightly, aiming for strict rhythmic accuracy (e.g., don’t mash the first notes together, and drag the rest – everything should be equal).
Repeat this until your attention tires, or your hand tires, then shake it out, relax, breathe, and repeat. The hammer group itself should end up feeling effortless, as you’re just lightly hammering to fret the notes.
Tip
You also work on hammer groups away from the guitar throughout the day. You may already be able to tap your fingers quickly in succession on a desk as “1-2-3-4” or “4-3-2-1”, but “3-2-4-1” is new and weird. Try it out and get it smooth and fast. If you can do it easily on your desk, it will translate to guitar.
The fastest that you can play this hammer group with strict rhythmic accuracy is the upper limit of your speed. You’ll still have to deal with joining hammer groups (see “Joining Groups” below), but this concept reduces fretting to very small units that can be run lightning fast.
Other Hammer Groups¶
The above arpeggio has other hammer groups. All notes in each measure are hammered together as a chord, but the notes marked with an “x” won’t sound because they’re masked by higher frets on the same string:
Other groups
You could take each group, and bounce them as a chord to get good initial finger placements, and then “slow them down” to very fast arpeggios:
Joining Groups¶
Hammer groups have to be joined (alas), but here is one way to work on it.
Let’s take the first two hammer groups of the full arpeggio:
Group 1 and 2
You should be able to play each of them lightning fast, each as a single “impulse group.” For joining them, you’ll have to make that position shift from the first hammer group to the second in no time at all. Start by adding the jump, all at the same lightning-fast tempo:
Group 1 and jump
Repeat that until the jump has started to meld into the “impulse group” of the first hammer group.
Maybe add a few notes from the second hammer group, just to be sure of the hand placement:
Then join these two impulse groups together:
Joined groups
You’ll need to spend some time doing trial-and-error of motions for the jump and position shift. Stay loose, and schedule a few short practice sessions per day, and it will become more natural and automatic.
Note
This technique may seem limited, since you can only hammer up to 4 notes at the same time; however, it can give valuable insight. Since each rep is very short, you can try many short tests to find the best fingering and hand position. The key is the rhythmic accuracy and ease of each group.