Technique or posing??

I've seen a few guys on the live scene recently doing this thing when they hold the kneck of the guitar with the right hand near the tuning pegs and do lots of hammer-ons and stuff with the left. Think it was Joe Satriani I saw doing this on a video a while ago so was just wondering is there any purpose to them holding on with the right hand like that or is it just posing to make it look like you're doing something impressive when you're not really.

I think I've seen Steve Vai do that too. I think I know what you're talking about and usually if theyre doing hammer ons and stuff I think it serves the purpose of muting out the other strings. I do the same thing...but it's only cause I'm copying those guys. So to answer your question I think theyre just trying to mute out the other strings.

Yeah, it's a combo of muting the strings and showing off. Nothing wrong with showing off like that if you can do it right, gives the crowd something to look at...

yea you put your hand there to mute, and to show off.

Of course you can mute the string with your picking hand palm, but who does that????? It all about getting to crowd to shout.

Thats why we all perform anyway...

There are several things that come to mind that they could be doing:

If it's actually the headstock they are grabbing then they could be pulling and/or pushing on the neck to get a variation in pitch. Like using a tremolo bar but more subtle. More like bending actually, but instead of bending a note they are bending the whole pull-off/hammer-on lick. This is the most likely scenario.

Also, if it's a player who is NOT using a Floyd rose tremolo with locking nut, he could be pushing on the string behind the nut, again to cause a change in pitch.

Another trick could be that they are actually fretting a note on the string where they are performing the lick to change pitch of the open string...if the lick involves pulling-off to an open string. But if they're grabbing the actual headstock that's probably not the case.

Hope that helps. :D

-Tom

Yup, it's to mute the other strings when doing some one handed legato.

Bet you saw it in G3 DVD. It was Satriani. It's not exactly showing off, more to mute the unused strings since he's doing a kind of arpeggio using all 6 strings. Without the muting, it'll sound absolutely horrible.

It's in Satriani's song, The Mystical Potato Head Groove Thing, if you want to know.