String bending is one of the most effective techniques one can use to lend expression and emotion to lead lines.
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When done well,
String bending is one of the most effective techniques one can use to lend expression and emotion to lead lines.
When done well, bent notes can emulate the lyrical, singing quality of the human voice and make a melody really “speak” with authority and a deep sense of feeling. This is especially true of bent vibratos, wherein a string is first bent up to a specific pitch and finger vibrato is then added to the bent note.
In this lesson, I present a variety of ways to fortify and improve one’s string bending technique.
To me, the most important aspect of bending is achieving good intonation (pitch centering) and making sure your bends are properly in tune. Few things sound worse than a bend that is out of tune and indecisive. Let’s begin with a scale shape that just about every electric guitar player is well familiar with, the E minor pentatonic scale, as played in 12th position (see FIGURE 1).
The idea with our first exercise, shown in FIGURE 2, is to fret a note in the E minor pentatonic scale and then bend the string up to the next scale tone, return to the unbent note and then pull-off to the next lower scale degree. On beat one, I bend the G note, sixth string/15th fret, up one whole step to A, release the bend back to G, and then pull off to E at the 12th fret. Repeat this three-note phrase over and over until it feels comfortable and every bend is as close to being perfectly in tune as possible.
In FIGURE 3, we move to the fifth string and bend the B note at the 14th fret up one and one