Basic Whole Tone String Bending Techniques

Hi, I am Stewart Bull from licklibrary.com and welcome to this lesson on string bending. If you have never bent a string before, you could be forgiven for thinking that you are pushing the string because what you are basically doing is fretting a note and pushing upwards but we call it string bending or as commonly known as string bending. There are various ways that you can bend. You can actually bend that way, towards the ceiling or you can bend towards the floor. What we are going to do today is just look at a basic bend towards the ceiling and we are going to do what is known as a whole tone bend.

Okay, first of all, let us look at the left hand technique. What we are going to do is we are going to put the thumb over the neck like that and we are going to use this joint here, which is hopefully going to anchor over there quite nicely. Then what we are going to do is we are going to put the third finger of the left hand on the note that we are going to bend. In this case, it is a G note and it is eight fret on the B string so it is this note right here. Now a whole tone is actually moving up two frets in pitch, so if we go, there is the original note one, two. That is the note that we are going to bend too. So it is really important to get this note squarely in our heads, really make sure you have that note in there and then go back to this note and push it until you hear that pitch.

Okay, now I am doing it very slowly just so you could move up to that pitch slowly because when you very first started doing this technique, it is hard to do it quickly. And as we get better, we want to be able to move, so get that note. Now, another thing to pay close attention to and this will help you with the accuracy is using this first finger and the second finger behind the third finger like that just to make sure that you have. It is like a bit like three people barging down a wall as suppose to one. You have this other two guys behind this guy helping him to push this up. That is a whole turn bend and that is the technique. You use to get it, have fun.


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