Hello all, my teacher has recently brought it to my attention that my pull-offs are not "crisp" enough...in particular, pull-offs on the middle strings (eg. the classic 3-2 on the third string). This is fairly discouraging since pull-offs are one of those first-day basics that I thought were long behind me...
He suggested pushing up on the string to get that nice "snap"...so, with the 3-2 pull-off, for instance, the middle finger would push up and off the string at a bit of an angle so as to replicate playing that extra note on 2 without literally picking the string. So in other words, I would let the skin of my middle finger stick a bit on the string, and so the middle finger would sort of be plucking the string...
The problem I'm having is that if I make that push too accented, I'll often either hit the open 2nd string above or get a strange, ugly twang. On the other hand, if I make the pull-off too weak, you can't hear that extra note, defeating the purpose of the pull-off in the first place...
He said part of the problem is that the strings on my banjo are fairly close together, making it hard to find the golden mean between playing it too hard and playing it too soft...additionally, the strings on my banjo seem to be relatively heavy and/or thick, so that might have something to do with it...
How do YOU play your pull-offs? Push up off the string? Pull down on it? A mix of both (that's me: I only pull down on first string pull-offs)?