Rob Schumann: The subject of this tutorial is step and a half bends and this is really a technique that can give you some variety and some novelty to your lead playing. It's great for when you are improvizing as well, particularly in the blues, rock or fusion setting and basically this is just sort of an addition to your normal bending technique of whole steps and half steps. So where as a whole step bend goes up two frets, a half step up one fret when you are matching the notes.
A step and a half is matching pitches up three frets. So in this case, we will be bending up a lot here on the 15th fret of the second string. If I was going to go up three frets, I would be matching this 15th fret to the pitch of the 18th fret. So these bends are a lot easier to execute, sort of in the mid range of your guitar neck where the strings are little looser. Of course, there is also the thinner the string the easier it's going to be to bend also and really you can do that in many ways and if you got the power under your fingers. But they are particularly useful here and we will look at a couple of different applications of where you would use this. We will start up by looking at is it for a minor 7 chord.
If I am over a d minor 7 chord for example. The root note of that of course is a D and I can find that here on the 15th fret of the second string. Normally, bending off of the root isn't that effective way to follow the changes when you are playing. But here if we bend a step and a half off for the root or actually going to get to the flat third which is a chord degree or a chord tone out of that minor 7 chord. So it will actually hit this F note up an octave at of that d minor 7. So we will hit this note. So we can actually bend off the root to hit that. So it works well over a minor 7 chord.
Another application of it though is bending from the five to the flat 7, that's also a step and a half or a minor third. So with this minor 7 chord, I could take an A note which I can find here on the 14th fret of the third string and I can bend that up to match the pitch of the 17th fret and so that's the way that I can also bend from the fifth to the flat 7. That will also work over a dominant 7th chord. So if I have a D dominant 7 I can also make that work from the five to the flat 7.
So in this case, we have got three licks that sort of use this idea. This is over the minor 7 idea bending from the root to the flat third and there is sort of three applications of ways that we can phrase with this. So the first one that we will look is taking that root note and just going ahead and bending it up that step and a half and so that just gives you sort of a wide sounding surprise bend in the middle of your lick. So we will be taking this D and bending it up to sound like an F and so this is sort of add up the Blue scale, D Blue scale that starts on the 12th fret of the fourth string and so putting this lick in context, one more time.
So if you want those exact pitches and rhythms you can refer the tab at the beginning of the video, but it starts off with just a regular whole step bend from the fourth up to the fifth of the chord and then notice here on the 13th fret of the first string I am hitting the flat third and then bending to that same note. So I am bending up that step and a half when I get to this 15th fret of the second string, so there is our first lick.
The second lick is going to use a little trick that's a really nice melodic thing that you can put it on some licks and this is using the ninth with the chord and depending on what kind of music you are playing landing on the nine can sound kind of cool. In jazz, it's known as a color tone and in blues it can sound kind of nice as well. So if I take this same D note on the 15th fret of the second string and bend it up a whole step that will give me the ninth. In some instances, I can get away with just hanging on that. In this case though, we can do something kind of cool and actually resolve it to the flat third. So we can bend up that whole step and then kick it up one more half step to that step and a half bend and then go and land on the root again. So I am matching this pitch and then kicking up one more to match this pitch, the 18th fret. So you can kind of provide some tension with that ninth and then resolve it to the flat third.
So in this case with this lick I am going to be sort of travelling from this position of the blue scale and to this position. So let's go ahead and play that second lick, one more time. So I started out just with sort of a cliché blues thing bending from the four to the five again. And then sliding from the five up to the flat seven into this new positions. Now without even breaking that bend kicking it up. So that's our second lick.
For the third lick, let's take this even a step farther. There is a couple tricks that you can do with this idea as well. You don't always have to bend all that all the way up to that step and a half. There is a couple of other things that we can do. This will give us a sound sort of like this. We are hitting the nine and then fretting the flat third. But instead of going to a new string what we can do is go ahead and bend up to the nine and then use the fourth finger to fret next to it.
Since the string is already bend up a whole step this fretted note is also going to be bend up a whole step. So notice that gives me the same effect. You can also do this on the first string which is great, because you really don't have a string pass that to fret if want to bend to a fretted note. So in this case, I am bending the ninth and then fretting the flat third on top of that, so bending up to E and then hitting F.
Now one other applications that will actually throw into this lick is sort of a fun novelty sound and that's adding a slide in with your bend. So we are actually going to start down at the third fret which is also a D on the second string and slide all the way into the 15th fret and go straight into that bend. So the cool thing about that is its sound like this bend that they really goes over an octave. It's also a great way to bridge positions of a scale that are quite a distance away from each other.
So I will start with the lick down here that begins like in the open position. So I am just lowering off of the second fret of the third string landing on the F which is also the flat third of this chord. Then once again, you can get the exact rhythm off of the tab at the beginning of the video. Now I am just lowering from one to three on the second string and then sliding right up to the 15th. So let's take a look at the whole lick, one more time. So hope you have fun with those and good luck incorporating that in your music.
Ryan Newell: Hey, everyone my name is Ryan Newell. I play guitar in the band Sister Hazel. This would be a G chord and you just strum down and then arpeggio back up. The last bend which is.
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