Jack here, jbf music and guitar, this quick
guitar tricks tutorial is on how to extend
your bends. And to explain what was going
on in the intro I’m going to reference around
7 or so guitarists, using 5 licks, some exercises
and throw in any bonus tips I can think of
in about 5 minutes, better get to it!
Right, the basic technique is to bend, hold
that bend, then play a higher note with another
finger; you can hammer, tap, or just fret
a note normally. If I bend F# a semi tone
to G, pretty much all these notes are a semi
tone higher depending on your guitar and setup
these might start to sound flat after a few
frets. If we bend a tone say G to A ; again
pretty much all the frets will sound a tone
higher ; eventually they’ll start to go
a bit flat, but bonus tip; you can always
just increase your bend a tad to raise it
to pitch.
Ok, cool how do I use this? Well in E minor
if we bend this A up to a B; We can play these
notes; The way I’m thinking of this is like
sort of B phrygian but a tone down; A Phrygian
reaaly; and you could do this with any scale;
quickly here’s E Aeolian . Bonus trick there,
you can bend with the taps as well, like I
did on that 21st fret. It’s probably healthier
to think in terms of the intervals in relation
to the chords in the longer term, but scales
can at help get you started and to know which
notes are at least in key.
So, if we use this first note, from our Phrygain
example we can get an Andy Timmons or Guthrie
Govan style lick click the lesson card in
the top right if you want to learn some tasty
bendy Guthrie Licks. This bend goes to the
5th, the finger action suggest a b6; a tense
but cool interval over the E minor. If we
bend this A on the G string up to a B and
tap on the 19th fret, we get a classic Billy
Gibbons, from ZZ Top tapping lick. What Josh
Homme, from queens of the stoneage; would
call tasteful tapping.
In terms of the intervals I’m bending up
to B, E’s 5th, then tapping what would usually
be a D, but due to the bend is in fact an
E, our root;, so we get a great way to outline
an E minor .
There are, of course, the Van Halen licks
using the b5 and other chromatic notes, but
keeping things in key and tapping multiple
notes we can get a pedal point type lick by
tapping. For some bonus ideas you can add
in slides like I did in the intro, use double
stops and all sort of stuff. We can also,
get a new way of playing this lick play ; in
a different way Hubert Sumlin – Smokestack
Lightning springs to mind in terms of the
original; eh, card up there if you want to
learn that lick. But yeah, Bonus tip, repeated
tapping on that note can give a Jeff Beck
or Joe Satriani style lick; more or less depending
more or less on how much gain you have dialled
in! And in terms of intverals we’ve got
B, the 5th and D the b7th. You can of course
bend a semi tone, 3 semi tones or any amount
you desire. For example getting an E minor
arpeggio if we do this bending E up a b3rd,
tapping; what would be a G# (21st fret), but
due to the bend is a B . And to round the
licks up, this one is maybe a bit like Chris
Poland and makes use of bending out notes;
which ideal you want to bend quickly or even
pre bend and legato and a bit slower . So
after the A to G pull off, extended bend bit
is going: A, B, G; 4th, 5th, b3rd in relation
to E minor.
If you liked these licks you might want to
check out my Jeff Beck Whammy bar licks there,
George Lynch Pro Tips or the aforementioned
Guthrie licks; which I’ll link to in a pinned
comment and in the description. This has been
quick tricks, that’s the playlist up there;
if you’ve enjoyed it let me know in the
comments, hit subscribe, share and enable
notifications with that bell on the side,
if you feel so inclined, cheers, guys.
