Quite often, when I’m teaching a beginner or intermediate student and bends come up in lessons for the first time, I find that many students have instincts on how to do a bend that are pretty far off from what they should be.
They’ll go in for their first attempt at a bend, and land in a hand position that doesn’t lend enough leverage and support. Then, when they attempt the bend, it stalls out far below where it should have been. Along with that, they also often don’t have a clear idea of how far to push the string to begin with.
As a result, the bend comes off sounding slow, belabored, and out of tune. The overall difficulty and bad sound that comes from the bend makes the student reluctant to attempt bends much to begin with. But what a shame that is, because almost nothing will liven up lead guitar playing more than some good bends!
Luckily, once students learn the basics of good movement and a bit of bending-oriented ear training, these same students will come to have good sounding bends themselves.
So, in this post, I wanted to do a beginner oriented lesson on what should be going on in the hand, mechanically, when doing a bend. I also wanted to show ways that you can work on correcting the pitch/tuning of your bends if you think that’s an issue.
If you are above the beginner level, but feel that your bends are off in some way, you’ll likely find some takeaways from this video as well.
Topics include:
- Optimal hand position for doing a bend
- Different types of bends (1/2, Full, 1/4, 1 1/2, etc.)
- The difference between a bend, a bend/release, and a pre-bend
- How to push the other strings out of the way when doing a bend
- How to read bends in TAB
- The role the picking hand plays in doing a bend
- Exercises to get better at doing bends, and how to work on this yourself
So, think of this as a “comprehensive guide to doing bends.” Take the information here, and apply it anywhere in your playing where you might need it. It could be in a solo you’re learning, it could be in your own improvisations, or even in a riff you’re writing.