My Bends are Anemic. How to Improve?

[Phil47uk]

I already posted this in another thread talking about bends, so I might as well throw it in here too seeing as it's about the same subject.
Personally I prefer to introduce vibrato in the same way a singer would. A plain note with increasing width and intensity.
Here's a post I put somewhere else.

Here's a little thing I did a year or so back buggering around adjusting the neck pickup on my R0..Just straight into the desk, no effects and ad libbed in one take, so don't expect a great tune or tone as it's only a test clip and the only way I could get it onto my computer anyway was taking a lead out of the headphones socket on a Tascam..
Here is the sort of vib I tend to use, although this is not my usual style of playing.

4shared.com - online file sharing and storage - download Humph.mp3

[tintin]

Originally Posted by NowGibson

I keep an old takamine acoustic (12-54) around the house to play and when I plug in my electric it's easier all around to play it (10-46). Similar idea.
Another thought is that you may incorporate it as part of you style...and refine it...
Albert King said those picks kept flying out of my hand so I just used my thumb...his bends are pretty
large, if he needed to go up to a note he'd just bend to it.

Agree. Play an acoustic for a while, and practice all your bends, hammer ons, pull offs, vibrato, etc. on it for a while, and your electric will feel like it's strung with spider webs.

[970harris]

Jumping in late here, but I'd add the following thoughts to what has been said so far:

Another way to build strength is to practice the same bend starting at the low end of the neck and working your way up. For example, start on the fifth fret on the 3rd string, and bend up from the fretted note --- C --- with your 3rd finger a full step to D. Then move up a half step and bend up from C# to Eb. You'll find after you work all the way up to the 17th fret (i.e., a full octave), your fingers will be tired. If you bend up and then put some vibrato on it, the "drumstick" muscle at the base of your thumb will be full of lactic acid and tired, too. The other advantage of this approach is that it gets you focused on bending up to the correct pitch at different points on the fretboard --- what's required to bend up a full note at the fifth fret is different from how far your finger has to move at the 17th fret, for example. As someone suggested earlier, doing this while plugged into a tuner can help train your ear / fingers to get as close to the pitch you are tyring to bend to as possible.


I'd echo the earlier comment about stretching after you go through any bending / vibrato exercises, I'd just make sure you actually stretch your fingers, too (e.g., if you have really worked the base of your thumb, push back on your thumb with the palm of your other hand to stretch that muscle out).

Lot's of folks bend, and vibrato from a bend, with their pinkie. As somebody pointed out above, the same principle about adding leverage with your index and middle finger to a ring finger bend applies to bending with your pinkie: get all of the other fingers on the string to help get you up there. That becomes even more important when you are bending to vibrato: in my case, a bend in and of itself doesn't require that extra support but that putting a nice vibrato on top of it does. I envy the cats who can do all of it with just the one finger.

Work at fretting and bending with the very tip of your finger. I've found that, as your calouses get bigger / fatter, there is a certain amount of muting that occurs the further your grip on the string gets from your fingernail --- the note will ring clearer if your contact with the string is close to the fingertip. I'm not really strong on this myself but am working at it...

I'd contend a little bit with the idea that the "pro" way of bending to vibrato, at least in blues, is to bend, let the note ring for a little bit, and to then start your vibrato. That's a cool way to do it, but so is bending up and once you are up a full step, immediately stinging the note with your vibrato. Or simply yanking up that entire full step and putting on the vibrato, effectively in one step, so that the bend itself is not even discernible. All 3 work and sound cool, it just kind of depends on what effect you are looking for.

Last thing: sometimes pushing some notes that sound like a wailing cat into a solo works pretty well. Duane Allman and Freddie King come to mind...