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A pull-off is a
stringed instrument In musical instrument classification, string instruments, or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer strums, plucks, strikes or sounds the strings in varying manners. Musicians play so ...
playing and articulation technique performed by plucking or "pulling" the finger that is grasping the sounding part of a string off the
fingerboard The fingerboard (also known as a fretboard on fretted instruments) is an important component of most stringed instruments. It is a thin, long strip of material, usually wood, that is laminated to the front of the neck of an instrument. The stri ...
of either a fretted or unfretted instrument. This intermediate- to advanced playing technique is done using the tip of a finger or fingernail on the fretting hand. Pull-offs are done to facilitate the playing of embellishments and ornaments such as
grace note A grace note is a kind of music notation denoting several kinds of musical ornament (music), ornaments. It is usually printed smaller to indicate that it is melodically and harmonically nonessential. When occurring by itself, a single grace no ...
s. Pull-offs may be notated in sheet music or improvised by the performer, depending on the musical style and context.


Performance and effect

A pull-off is performed on a string which is already vibrating; when the fretting finger is pulled off (exposing the string either as open or as stopped by another fretting finger "lower" on the same string, with "lower" meaning in a position that is lower in pitch) the note playing on the string changes to the new, longer vibrating length of the string. Pull-offs are performed on both
fret A fret is any of the thin strips of material, usually metal wire, inserted laterally at specific positions along the neck or fretboard of a stringed instrument. Frets usually extend across the full width of the neck. On some historical inst ...
ted instruments (e.g.,
electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external electric Guitar amplifier, sound amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar. It uses one or more pickup (music technology), pickups ...
) and unfretted instruments (e.g.,
violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...
). They are used to sound
grace note A grace note is a kind of music notation denoting several kinds of musical ornament (music), ornaments. It is usually printed smaller to indicate that it is melodically and harmonically nonessential. When occurring by itself, a single grace no ...
s with the transition from one note to the other sounding gentler and less percussive because the string is not picked or bowed again by the typical picking/bowing hand to produce the sound of the second note. In the transition between the initial and final notes, the string may vibrate in an
inharmonic In music, inharmonicity is the degree to which the frequencies of overtones (also known as partials or partial tones) depart from whole multiples of the fundamental frequency ( harmonic series). Acoustically, a note perceived to have a sin ...
manner for several cycles if it is plucked with the fretting finger, because the string is being plucked in a part of the string not usually used for plucking. The result, a slight "quack" sound, may be particularly audible when the interval of the pull-off is large. This transition also consumes some of the vibrational energy in the sounded string, with the effect that the second note is generally much quieter than the original. On a low-pitched string that is being bowed on a stopped note, say, at the halfway point of the vibrating string length, the player may left-hand flick the string immediately prior to sounding the deep-pitched open string to help the string "speak". Without the left-hand "flick", there could be a half-second delay in the sounding of the deep fundamental.


Acoustic versus electric instruments

On most acoustic instruments, this means the second note has little
sustain In sound and music, an envelope describes how a sound changes over time. For example, a piano key, when struck and held, creates a near-immediate initial sound which gradually decreases in volume to zero. An envelope may relate to elements such ...
. As a result, in acoustic music, pull-offs are primarily used as an embellishment. Performers of plucked instruments tend to use "pull-offs" when playing grace notes, usually in conjunction with multiple hammer-ons and strumming or picking to produce a rapid, rippling effect. In
rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wale ...
and
heavy metal music Heavy metal (or simply metal) is a Music genre, genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and United States. With roots in blues rock, psychedelic rock and acid rock, heavy metal band ...
,
electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external electric Guitar amplifier, sound amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar. It uses one or more pickup (music technology), pickups ...
s are often performed with overdriven amplifiers and/or
guitar effects An effects unit, effects processor, or effects pedal is an electronic device that alters the sound of a musical instrument or other audio source through audio signal processing. Common effects include distortion (music), distortion/overdrive, ...
such as
distortion pedal Distortion pedals are a type of effects unit designed to add distortion to an audio signal to create a ''warm'', ''gritty'', or ''fuzzy'' character. Depending on the style of signal clipping, the broader category of distortion pedals is typicall ...
s and
compression Compression may refer to: Physical science *Compression (physics), size reduction due to forces *Compression member, a structural element such as a column *Compressibility, susceptibility to compression * Gas compression *Compression ratio, of a ...
pedals are used, which add substantial sustain to the sound. With this type of electronic gear and a powerful
instrument amplifier An instrument amplifier is an electronic amplifier that converts the often barely audible or purely electronic signal of a musical instrument into a larger electronic signal to feed to a loudspeaker. An instrument amplifier is used with music ...
nearing the threshold of
feedback Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause and effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to ''feed back'' into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handle ...
, pull-offs can even be used to play sustained notes. In a variation of the technique, often called a "flick-off", the pulling-off finger is dragged slightly across the face of the string while performing the pull-off. This results in the string being gently sounded, either by the player's finger callus or by their fretting-finger fingernail. This increases the volume and sustain of the pulled-off note, although the sound of the fretting finger dragging over the string may be audible on both an amplified instrument and on a brightly strung acoustic instrument.


Left-hand pizzicato

Classical music of the late romantic period features numerous applications of the technique to bowed string instruments such as the
violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...
,
viola The viola ( , () ) is a string instrument of the violin family, and is usually bowed when played. Violas are slightly larger than violins, and have a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of the ...
,
cello The violoncello ( , ), commonly abbreviated as cello ( ), is a middle pitched bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), tuned i ...
, and
double bass The double bass (), also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, the bull fiddle, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched string instrument, chordophone in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding rare additions ...
. In the classical context, the term is referred to as left-handed pizzicato. When a player switches from arco (bowing) to regular pizzicato, the player normally requires a short pause to switch his or her bowing hand into pizzicato position and pluck the string. With left-hand pizzicato, though, a string player can play a pizzicato note immediately following a bowed note; thus, left-hand pizzicato provides a means to intersperse pizzicato notes into rapid passages of bowed notes. The string on which the note is played may be either open or stopped (fingered); the only requirement for using the technique on a stopped string is that the finger stopping the string be lower than the finger plucking the string. Left-hand pizzicato appears most prominently in
violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...
"virtuoso pieces" such as
Pablo de Sarasate Pablo Martín Melitón de Sarasate y Navascués (; 10 March 1844 – 20 September 1908), commonly known as Pablo de Sarasate, was a Spanish violinist, composer and Conducting, conductor of the Romantic music, Romantic period. His best known work ...
's Zigeunerweisen and Paganini's 24th Caprice.


Etymology

The term ''pull-off'' was invented and popularized by
Pete Seeger Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and social activist. He was a fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s and had a string of hit records in the early 1950s as a member of The Weav ...
in his book ''How to Play the 5-String Banjo''. Seeger also invented the term '' hammer-on''.


Sources

{{Shred Guitar Guitar performance techniques