Introduction
Wohoo... based on several requests, I figured I should elaborate a bit on bending and vibrato. Not only are those techniques something pretty much every guitarist has to deal with (so, this article ain't for you shred-freaks out there only!), but also, this article could be considered an addition or a "part II" of my "The Quest For Tone" article (Guys, thanks a lot for all the feedback on that one. I really appreciate it!!!)
Because... apart from your attack, the way you pick the string etc., the way you bend and vibrate strings is an integral part of your tone. Although there are many different kinds of vibrato, you can still often recognize certain players by the way they bend and vibrate. (Some obvious examples: Jeff Beck and Steve Morse).
And so, to kinda prove that to you and to give you an extra tread, I asked my buddy Thorsten Koehne to record some soundfiles... in combination with the soundfiles I recorded, they might help you to hear the difference in tone and bending / vibrato. So, let's talk about some different exercises and types of vibrato etc.
The technical side
Actually, both vibrato and bending are based on the same technique... on bending a string, thereby raising it's pitch. Here is a picture which might explain this way easier than words can:
In that pic, you see me bending very wide... the important part is not that that player is bending that far, but the fact that you can pretty much see what you have to do: Pull the string towards the floor. This is what I do on the low E-, A- and D-String.
The other three strings I push upwards to bend them. So I am moving them in the other direction. The reason for that is that I won't push or pull the string off the fretboard that way. Imagine you bend the high E-string by pulling it towards the floor... you would pull it off the fretboard.
So, the rule of thumb I go by is:
- I PULL the lower three strings towards the floor
- I PUSH the upper three strings upwards, towards the ceiling
Bends
Now, before I get further into the technique, here is a soundfile of Thorsten doing half-tone bends. Meaning that he plays a note, and then pulls it up to another note a half step above the first note... then, he releases the note again to the original pitch.
1/2 tone bends
And here is a soundfile of him doing whole-tone bends...
1 tone bends
OK, now how can you practise this? Because... even though a lot of blues-guys sometimes don't bend to the exact right pitch (this is sometimes referred to as "over-bend" and "under-bend") to give their lines a dirtier, bluesier sound (check out some leads by Jimmy Page), most of the time you want to be in tune, you want to bend the note to the exact right pitch.
Even if you do have good ears, it might take a while until you're able to do it without effort. Using your ears, improvising a lot using bends etc. sure will get you there. But I would like to show you a cool exercise I was taught at the MI...
OK, this is how it works. Let's say you wanna work on your whole step-bends. Now, pick a start note (example: F#, 7th fret on the B-string). Your target note is a whole step above at, at the 9th fret of the B-string (G#).
Now, usually you would most likely fret the F#, pick it and then bend it till you reach the G#. That is what most players do in their everyday-playing anyway... it takes a while till you reach the target pitch, and it's a really cool sound effect to do a slow bend. BUT... in this exercise, we wanna work on bending to the right pitch by feel! We will not adjust the bend by ear anymore. This is what you do:
Fret the F# and play it. Then, fret the G# and play that one. Now you know what the target note sounds like. Try to memorize it. Next, fret the F#, pick it. Before you pick again, bend it up as far as you think you need to bend to get the G#. THEN pick the note. That way, you don't actually hear the bend, just the result of it.
Did you bend far enough? Didn't overbend? Congrats. TRY AGAIN!
Did you bend too far? Or did ya overbend? Bummer. TRY AGAIN!
This method - by first playing both the start-note and the target-note to memorize their sound and then bending up to the target-note before you pick the string - will really get your hands used to bending to the exact right pitch, without a need to check with your ears.
You should be able to do these bends without too much correction-by-ear. Why? Well, because you might not always be able to hear yourself well enough to correct bad bending. If you're on stage and there are no monitors / crappy monitors / out-of-reach-monitors, there's no way for you to judge whether you're bending correctly... well, ok, if you look at the faces of the people in the first row, you'll most likely be able to tell when you bend a quarter-step too far. Especially if that happens in the middle of that cool solo in that beautiful ballad.
Anyway, here's how that exercise sounds. Whole tone-steps:
Exercise with whole tone bends
And, half-tone-steps:
Exercise with half-tone bends
Doing this exercise a few minutes everyday will sure help you to improve your bending technique. I didn't mean to say that slowly bending from one note to the other is not correct... it certainly sounds good and is what most of us think about when we think "string-bending". But you should be able to bend "by feel" as well...
One other benefit of doing that exercise is that you can adjust to playing on a different guitar or different string-gauges easily. Usually it takes a while to get used to... say, a set of heavy-gauge strings if you're mainly using light gauge ones. But if you do this kinda exercise on that guitar for a few minutes, you'll kinda "calibrate" on it, adjust to it.
More bending techniques
How far will you go?
Although we have only talked about half-tone and whole-tone bends so far, you can sure bend further than that... listen i.e. to Dave Gilmour's solo in Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. II"... he's pulling a minor third in there (3 half tone steps). Or check out the ending solo of Toto's "Rosanna". In that cool solo, Lukather does major third bends.
And you can go even further, if you dare. Or... bend less than a half tone. Some players like i.e. Jeff Beck use those kind of "microtone" bends to achieve a certain oriental-type sound... you can create some very cool, very exotic sounds that way. (check out THIS soundfile of Thorsten improvising a bit, using small, quick bends and trills the way Marty Friedman would do it... this adds a very japanese-like sound to the lines...)
So, don't limit yourself to using only halftone- or wholetone-bends. One way to help you bend further would be to use reinforced bends. First of all, you'll notice that it's kinda tough to bend a string a major third with only one finger. Reinforced bends help to do that.
Here's how it works: Fret some note on the G-string, let's say the G at the 12th fret. Fret it with your pinkie. Put the other three fingers "behind" the pinkie... so the ring finger is at the 11th fret, the middle finger is at the 10th fret, the index finger is at the 9th fret.
When you pick the string, you'll only hear the G fretted by your pinkie, but you can use the other three fingers to bend the string... so instead of just bending with your pinkie, you're actually bending with all four fingers.
Here are two pictures to illustrate that:
OK, let's talk about some other cool bending techniques.
Oblique bend
This is one of my all-time favorite bending techniques. I use it quite a lot, i.e. at the beginning of the second verse of "Riders High", in the second "verse" of "Canyon Of Spirits", first chorus of "Carpe Noctem" etc.
I first heard it being used when I listened to Steve Lukather, I think. He uses it all the time.
How does it work? Now, fret i.e. the D at the 10th fret of the high E-string with your middle finger. Next, fret the A at the 10th fret of the B-string. Then, pick both strings, and bend up the A a whole step to B... do not bend the D! This gives you a raunchy, scream-like sound. The interval you create that way (B to D) is a minor third, and with a bunch of distortion, this sounds awesome... especially if you bend the A slowly.
Here's how it sounds:
Oblique bend
Oblique Bend II:
OK, there's another variation to oblique bends, which will give you a country-ish, pedal-steel-type sound. What you do is, you fret the high E- and B-string at the 15th fret with one finger, and fret the G-string at the 14th fret with another finger. Then, you strum all three strings once and bend the G-String up one whole tone (from A to B).
This is actually the same thing we had in our other oblique bend-example, but by adding the note on the high E-string, we get a warmer sound, which reminds me of a pedal steel quite a bit.
Here's what that sounds like:
Pedal steel-style oblique bend
As a variation, try to do a volume swell while you bend up. Steve Morse does that a lot.
One popular example of this can be heard in the solo of "Little Wing", at least in the version by SRV. Over the G-chord, Stevie first plays the previous lick, and once the F-chord comes in, he simply moves the whole figure down two frets.
And here's an audio example:
Lick a la Little Wing
Even more techniques
Unison Bend
This one seems to be a favorite among punk- and alternative guitarists, but a lot of blues-players use it too. You can also hear it i.e. in Jimi Hendrix's version of "All Along The Watchtower" and Vinnie Moore's "Coming Home".
What you do is:
With one finger, you fret the E at the 12th fret, high E-string. With another finger, you fret the D at the 15th fret, B-string. Then, you pick both strings and bend the D up to E, so you get a unison. Two E's. It's kinda easy to hear how far you have to bend, cuz it's a nasty sound if you're in between the D and E. Once your bend reaches the E, it kinda resolves. This allows you to control how far you have to bend.
This is how it sounds:
Unison bend
And here's what that looks like:
What not to play
An integral part of playing is what not to play! Or rather... muting technique. Especially when it comes to bending and vibrato. Due to the vertical movement, you'll sure touch adjacent strings, which, in combination with lots of gain and volume, will cause some serious noise. To avoid that, you should work on your muting technique. And muting involves both hands.
The right hand: With the right hand, it helps to create a "tunnel" around the strings you wanna use. Let's say you wanna play a note on the B-string and bend it up. To keep the other strings from ringing, you want to mute the E-string by touching it with one of the fingers you're not using to hold the pick. Same goes for the G-String.
You could also mute one of those strings with the pick after you pick the B-string. Let the pick rest on either one of those strings. I actually prefer to use an upstroke and mute the lower adjacent string, while muting the upper adjacent string with the ring-finger or pinkie of the left hand.
The left hand: The left hand can be used for muting in many different ways. When doing excessive bending, I often put the thumb over the upper edge of the fretboard and let it rest on the bass-strings. Check out this pic:
The only thing you have to make sure of is not to create extra noise with that thumb when you slide up or down.
The upper strings (if you i.e. play and bend the G-string, those would be the B- and E-string) can be muted with the lower parts of your l-h- fingers. This is kinda "sloppy playing", and usually should be avoided, but in this case, it seriously helps to avoid unwanted noise.
The lower adjacent string can also be muted by the finger tip of the finger you use to fret the note you're playing. So if you i.e. fret the G-string with your index finger, you can use the tip of that finger to mute the adjacent D-string.
Vibrato and putting it all together
We have discussed vibrato-technique in the forums several times. Lemme list the most important points:
- A good vibrato technique is an integral part of a players unique voice and tone
- It is also a very basic technique, which you should definitely work on
- Most players use vibrato kinda automatically... it's something they don't even think about anymore. And this is something that takes some time to develop.
- One of the toughest parts is not to exaggerate the use of vibrato. At first, you'll most likely tend to overuse the technique, applying too much or too quick vibrato to whatever you play. Or add some nervous vibrato to each note right after you pick that note. Which is usually not a very pleasant sound.
- A good tone is like a good voice, and vibrato is an important part of that. It definitely helps to pay some attention to the way singers apply vibrato to what they sing. One good bit of advice is: Especially when playing slow lines, long notes, apply vibrato like an opera singer would: Hit the note, let it ring for a while, then slowly start adding some vibrato, letting it get more intense after a while.
- There are several different kinds of vibrato... slow, fast, wide, narrow. Experiment with all of them, combine different parameters, such as "fast & wide vibrato" or "slow and narrow vibrato"
A good, basic vibrato exercise would be: Hit one note, then do a "half tone vibrato", bending the note up one half step and releasing it again. Try to vary the tempo.
Switch on the metronome, and try to synch your metronome with it... a vibrato which is in time with the music is way more musical than one that isn't.
Try to apply different kinds of vibrato to whatever you play. It can add to the character of your solos. A fast n'wide vibrato can add a lot of tension, excitement and anxiety to an otherwise rather simple solo.
Here's some basic vibrato, applied to a random note...
Vibrato
And this is an example of Thorsten's way of applying vibrato to a note:
TK vibrato
Putting it together
Now, I thought it would be interesting for you guys to hear two different players use vibrato and bendings in combination. This not only shows how much your "own" vibrato- and bending technique can differ from that of the next guy, but also how much it is an important part of your tone.
First example, here's a short, improvised solo by Thorsten. He combines bending and vibrato in this, applying those techniques the way he usually does. We didn't include a TAB, since it's more important to pay attention to HOW he plays what he plays... not WHAT he plays...
There ya go:
Thorsten improvising
And here are two soundfiles of me playing the famous "Amazing Grace"-melody. In the first soundfile, I play it rather straight, with no bends or vibrato, just a few slides in between. The second time, I add those techniques, combined with pinch harmonics, rakes etc. In the second soundfile you can hear a different version of it, just to show you how much you can add to that simple melody, and that you can play it many different ways...
Amazing grace, played straight, then with phrasing
Version No.2
And... here are two soundfiles of us playing variations of the same theme... the infamous first melody of Steve Vai's "For The Love Of God". The first soundfile is of Thorsten playing the melody straight at first, then adding all those subtle phrasing-tricks such as bends, vibrato, trills etc.
TKs take on it
And here's my version...
...and mine...
I think it's obvious how much vibrato and the bending-technique can make two players sound differently... and how much those musical tools can make simple lines and melody come alive!
Anyway, this is by no means a "complete method" or a "A to Z of bending and vibrato". Instead, we tried to give you a little introduction to the whole topic, plus some soundfiles and definitions of the techniques you can use.
I don't think it's that important to get lost in technical details when it comes to phrasing-techniques like the ones described here.
Instead, it's more important to try to use them, to explore them by yourself, to listen to other players and hear how they use this stuff.
I hope we got you started!
I'd like to thank Thorsten Koehne for providing some very cool soundfiles!!!