Now, let us talk about the types of bends you will going to be using. There is a thing called a half step bend. Now, half step remember, means on the guitar one fret away so, if I am starting a bend at the 7th fret on the 3rd string and I want you to do a half step bend. I am bending from the 7th fret,
(Guitar Demo)
And it is needs to sound like the note at the 8th fret.
(Guitar Demo)
So, I am bending from D to a D# so,
(Guitar Demo)
Kind of listen before you do it.
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Okay, here we go, I am going to bend up to that note.
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Listen again I am bending up a half step.
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So, it is important once again to kind of listen.
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Now, a full step bend which is gong to be obviously a little rougher to pull off in the beginning because you are going to have to bend with a little more strength is two frets so, I am starting on the D note at the 7th fret on the 3rd string.
(Guitar Demo)
And I am going to have to bend up to the 9th fret which is an E.
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So, hear it, here is the full step bend.
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Basic bend, you are just going like this
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You can also do a bend with Vibrato you know the thing that Eric Clapton brought into the guitar world so years ago where you just go.
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What you are doing there is you are just kind of shaking slightly with your wrist. Watch this.
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So you get this kind of
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It is almost like playing the violin. Now, I said earlier that generally you are going to bend towards yourself to kind of keep control. There is sometimes when you can bend and you can bend the way to get, if you really want to get like an off the wall wild sound, what you do is you kind of take your finger. In this case, I am bending from the 7th fret on the 3rd string. I am bending away from myself and I am going like
(Guitar Demo)
Like that. I am almost kind of hooking my finger nail on there so
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And back to the more control bend.
So, let us go over couple of this bends. We are done on the half step bend and the full step bend. Let us do a full step bend on the 2nd string, bending up a full step, 3rd finger at the 8th fret on the 2nd string which is G note. You are bending up a full step to A. So, you are starting at G,
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You want to bend up a full step to
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A,
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Like that. Do it again, listen
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Bend.
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Try to hit that note and after you bend, hold it for a second. Do not get that dying cow sound that
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You know, we do not want that so, try to keep the muscle straight up, hold the note.
Alright, let us try a bend and a release now. What we are going to do is we are going to bend, we are going to release the note, we are going to pick it once; we are going to get two notes. So, listen to this, we got
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That was a half step bend starting at the 7th fret on the 3rd string. Here we go again, bend,
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Release it back to the D
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And then pick
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And pick. Once again, that will going to give you more speed
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And it is a very cool sound.
Now, we are going to do another bend and release same idea, this time we are going to bend up a full step. So I am bending again from the 7th fret
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A D bending up a full step
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To an E like this
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Once more
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Let us do the same thing, let us do it down on that open E minor position for a second. We are going to go
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And we are going to throw a pull off here. Watch these
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So, instead of earlier we did a strict pull off,
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Now we are going,
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Thought you might have heard this before.
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Same thing, they are just doing it real fast
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Like that. Alright, so a couple more bends, let us go up here to the 10th fret on the 1st string which is part of that D minor position. Your call we ended here at the 10th fret. Well, guess what? We can take that up a full step like this,
(Guitar Demo)
Like that. So you are bending up from the 10th fret which is a D to the 12th fret which is in E, it is a full step bend.
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