If your pull-offs aren’t working, the first place to look is in the term: “Pull-Off,” accent on the “off” part of the movement or technique. Perhaps they should be called, ‘pull-downs,’ but that would probably be confusing. And it wouldn’t make matchy-matchy with the Hammer-On, would it?
The idea is that you’re creating two notes from one picking hand motion. The left or fretting hand does the extra work. But if you simply pull your finger away from the first note, you won’t get much of a second note. You have to consciously squeeze off the string with your finger, creating the second note by actually plucking it with your fretting hand. So instead of a motion away from the fretboard, you’re actually sliding or squeezing over in a downward and then circular motion. Your fretting finger will actually end up touching the fretboard before circling up and back into position for another note. Take a look at the video. It hurts a little at first. Some exercises and licks are included below to make it hurt even more.
You should be able to get a note with this technique even without the picking motion of the right hand. So, first you need to have two notes set up – the first one, a higher note, which will be picked with the right hand and then pulled off, and the second note which must be either open or fretted. If it’s a fretted note on the high E string, you have to hold onto it, not allowing the pull-off finger to pull the whole string out of line and therefore killing the second note and probably the first as well. But any fretted note that you're pull off to must be held on to.
Note that in tab or traditional musical notation, there are no terms like “pull-off” or “hammer-on” written into the music. When you see the slur sign, (see above) you’ll usually have two notes, with the slur sign on top of them (as in the examples). If the first note is higher than the second note, it’s a pull-off. If the second note is higher, it’s a hammer-on. Good luck and have fun!-Christian Botta
Once, I swore I wouldn’t form any more rock bands. Then a bolt of lightning from Maine called me asking for guitar lessons. It was the beginning of a band and a friendship. Unfortunately, the friendship eventually dissolved into a Nigel Tufnel – David St. Higgins type of, “We shant work together again” sort of farce, but for a while there, it was magic.
We started writing songs, and we always had plenty of fine wine to fuel the sessions and parties. There were some great vintages in those days, particularly the 2002 Red Burgundy. The market was high – the crash would come later. I wrote the music and my new collaborator Brendan wrote the words and melodies.
Nicholas James Maciolek and Tamar Prager at Kenny's Castaways in the mid-aughts.
I knew a bunch of musicians from bands I was in and the first version of our group included a drummer named Chip and the diabolically talented Nicholas James Maciolek on bass (above with Tamar). I met Nick in the band Her Majesty. He then got me a gig playing guitar in another group he was in, with a beautiful singer-songwriter named Arielle (below with me) and her eventual wife, Tamar. We did some great shows together.
Chris and Arielle at Kenny's.
Brendan was a natural onstage. I could tell by the way he moved when he played guitar. It was as if he was playing some simple thing like “Dead Flowers” for the back rows of Madison Square Garden. He also had a ton of friends between him and his girlfriend’s clans back home so there would be seventy people to see us do a gig at Kenny’s Castaways.
I was listening to Serge Gainsbourg a lot in those days, The History of Melody Nelson practically every day when I got up. We named the band after one of the songs, “Cargo Culte.” We tried to live it like Serge and I actually succeeded at one point but more on that later, perhaps.
The final lineup of Cargo Culte Left to Right: Mr Lucky, bass, Brendan, myself, and Tom Costogliola, drums. I was pretty lucky in those days, too.
A friend of mine had an excellent studio. It was called The Batcave and his name is Gary. His studio was designed by a genuine acoustical engineer and as soon as I saw it, I knew that it was the real deal. The first thing I look for in a studio is an isolation booth. It’s amazing that so many NYC studios don’t have one. But when I walked into the Batcave, I could see immediately that lo and behold, there were two of them! Maybe it was one for each wing, I’m not sure. But you could play an acoustic guitar in one while the drummer played outside in the main room and a singer warbled away in the other booth and I actually did this. Made me feel like a rock star. Oh, yeah – the studio sounded great.
From the first note to the last, we did everything at the Batcave. The point I’m coming to is that The Batman gave some real serious value for money. And he did a fantastic job engineering the EP that we produced. Gary made a tiny boo-boo at one point but it didn’t affect the final mix. In fact, I called him one day (on a motherfucking land line!) and he was sitting there, working on our record. I think he spent hours mixing this one song, free of charge. To me, it seemed like a privilege to be able to work this way, but no one else thought much of it. I think Brendan appreciated it.
The first song on our EP is “Justine,” which comes from the title of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet. A literary band, that’s what we were. Again, the repeated riff and this time the chorus with octaves, something I was into at the time. Easy for me to do for some reason – I wish I could speed pick. But not sweep pick. Maybe the swoop. I like the texture of the guitars and the way they’re layered – thanks Gary! I borrowed a pedal called a Strange Master from one of my students and it’s in there between the rhythm and lead guitars. I used my Marshall JCM 900 on a lot of that and a Fulltone ’69 fuzz. I love the lick at the end of the choruses, ala Zep, The Stones, Kurt and everybody else. The lineup for the EP was Brendan Tateishi - vocals, Christian Botta - guitar/backing vocals, Nicholas James Maciolek - bass, and Tom Costagliola - drums. Recorded by Gary Dorfman.
The second song on our EP is called “Been Through It All.” It has a repeated riff, a concept I was trying to work in and a double plagal cadence (drop me a line!) of power chords in the hook. To me it smacked of The Who but it was really more like The Smiths, one of Brendan’s favorite bands. The lyrics seem to have something to do with “Melody Nelson,” a song from the Serge album. Everyone was always saying that we sounded like The Smiths or the Stone Roses, which I didn’t get because I had been listening to The Smiths for years and I have an original pressing of the first Stone Roses album and I just didn’t hear it. I hear it now.
When we finished cutting the basic track of the song in the studio I was really happy with the way it came out. I used a Rick Kelly Telecaster which was brand new at the time and a Riviera 5512 which sadly has flown the coop. But eventually, I made too many overdubs and it sounds a little busy, maybe too complicated of an arrangement. I got a really good wah-wah sound using a Les Paul, a Vox Wah and the Riviera. It was a bit much for so-called Alt Rock. Boo-hoo!
The third song is “Rapture,” which I never understood. Maybe it was some kind of lapsed Catholic thing. It has a cool groove though, which Gary got into and worked on, connecting to it via Neil Young. I adapted the guitar solo from Iggy and the Stooges “Shake Appeal” from Raw Power. I worked hard on all the parts of the record. I’m happy with the way it came out.
Finally, there is “Back & Forth,” a ballad with Pink Floyd overtones. I like this one a lot, from the emotional lyrics to the orchestration and the overall sweep of the song. It features a guitar part that I’m very proud of. When all was said and done, there still seemed to be a hole in the chorus. I had a part that I had been working on, a line. I planned to play it straight but at the last minute I decided to use an MXR Blue Box. This is an octave fuzz pedal but instead of doubling the line an octave above, it puts the double an octave below, maybe two. It really fattens up the guitar and makes it sound like a synthesizer. It made the chorus bust out like a son of a bitch. Nailing these little studio flourishes isn’t as easy as it sounds. I finally got one!
We did some nifty covers at our gigs, too. My favorite was “Chimes of a City Clock” by Nick Drake. I wish I had a video of that. Have you ever listened to the words? There are a lot of them and they’re tricky to organize in your mind. Brendan did an amazing job with that. I had a straightforward approach to the guitar that can be done without fingerpicking or a fancy tuning and I got a velvety sound with an Electro-Harmonix Small Stone. I love phase shifters!
We also covered “I Wanna Be Adored” by the Stone Roses, maybe Brendan’s favorite band. You can see the performance of that in our medley (above) which includes a version of one of my originals, “Clouds.” It gives a good idea of what the band sounded like towards the end. A little heavy for us. A bit tougher to pull off was Lou Reed’s “I’m So Free,” a sleeper from the Transformer album. Go figure.
In the final sessions, where we were trying to write more tunes. I started working on a tune in F#, one of my favorite keys, and used slide guitar, which I had always played but never focused on enough. This idea would become the corner stone of my next band. I decided to return to my roots, the blues. The song is called, “Just Ain’t Right.”
Amazingly, our very cool demo/EP didn’t seem to do a great deal for us other than getting nice gigs at Arlene’s Grocery. Our following never grew beyond Brendan’s huge circle of friends and my limited one and the bumps and bruises of making it happen started to add up. This was pre-internet and it was still the time of, “Where are we gonna get a record deal?” Squabbles over the band’s direction, hired gun issues, songwriting and of course money eventually led to the band’s demise. Whaaaa! But I’m still really proud of what we did. It was a great little band and a lot of fun. -Christian Botta