How to Play Pull-Offs | Guitar Lesson

Pull-offs are a foundational technique for any guitarist — join Sweetwater’s Nick Bowcott for a fun and insightful lesson, and don’t forget to click the link above to read the full lesson article at Sweetwater!

0:00 - Intro
1:42 - Exercise #1
2:31 - How to Play a Pull-off
4:32 - Exercise #2
5:10 - Pull-off Tip #1: Keep Your Fingers Right Beind the Frets
5:23 - Pull-off Tip #2: Have Your Pull-off Note Ready
5:47 - Pull-off Tip #3: Don't Pull the String Out of Tune
6:37 - Pull-off Tip #4: Lift-offs Are for Rockets
6:58 - Pull-off Tip #5: Mute the Surrounding Strings
7:38 - Moving Between Strings
8:29 - Lick #1
10:53 - Lick #2
11:25 - Lick #3
11:36 - Liick #4
11:58 - Pull-offs in Notation
12:57 - Lick #5
13:17 - Thanks for Watching!

#Sweetwater

[sweetwater]

🎸What song are you ready to tackle after this lesson? If this video helped you, hit those like and subscribe buttons!

[lordundhimself]

As a righty, having a lefty teach creates a sort of mirroring effect that really agrees with me. More lessons please!

[cbenson]

Love Nick’s videos and especially how he teaches us at non-Zach level.

[mikephillips]

Great video ! "Thus far, " the best video I've seen on this subject. You're a great teacher!!

[acholouscognoscente]

I'm loving this guy. I don't need to learn about pull offs, but I can't stop watching.

[PaulNaas]

This guy's a hoot! Good instruction with just the right amount of sarcasm and silliness. Loved it!

[hiimdominic]

Wow he's playing a left handed guitar.
He is a great teacher!

[hounds-vhmr]

great tutorial. helped me a lot with not hitting the other strings while playing and increased my speed of doing pull-offs after just 10 minutes. another week or two of practicing and I will be able to play an avenged sevenfold riff I was wanting to learn. also love to see a fellow left handed guitar player. thank you for making such an easy to follow video. keep up the good work.

[dharmavaradarajan]

Thank you so much. That tip was so useful 🎉🎉🎉

[FifthCornerRecords]

Lovin all the sweetwater videos! I'm taking notes and gonna keep shouting you guys out! Thanks once again

[guloguloguy]

THANK YOU, VERY MUCH, NICK!!! IMHO: UNFORTUNATELY, THESE KINDS OF BASIC SKILLS ARE TOO OFTEN OVERLOOKED, AND NEGLECTED/AVOIDED!!! MUCH APPRECIATED!!!
THANK YOU, SWEETWATER!!!

[williambeedy]

Awesome I really like Nick's playing.

[valfreyja]

huh, I had never even heard of this technique before. Seems straight forward enough and really useful!

[Burnt_Gerbil]

You could say…. He pulled it off.

Ha! I’ll be here all week. Tip your waitress. 😆

[payamelahian]

I wonder why YouTube doesn't showed me any video from Sweetwater.
Nice video by the way.

[derekclacton]

Got it! That’s a technique l don’t need to fake 🤣😉