Most players also like to play grace notes or passing notes to spice things up a bit. The Blues, which many considered to be the roots of rock and jazz often use the guitars wrench emotion from the music by bending the strings to pitch during a solo. Listen to BB King or Albert King, Freddie King. Those are some of the great Blues influence. Rock musicians like Jimmy Hendricks, Erick Clapton, Jeff Beck, Keith Richards.
The saxophone, harmonica, and trumpet could also use a soulful bending of tones to great effect. If you get a chance, listen to Coltray and Johnny with the harmonica, Davis in trumpet.
Another method of pitch bending that been use since the early days of the blues is called the “bottle neck” just like a guitar. The sound is achieved by sliding the cut-off neck of the bottle up and down the strings. Gilmore James was a master of this style.
Better still, guitar is another great slide instrument. However, it is a lot difficult to bend the notes of a piano like a guitar, so we have to use our fingers to play the grace notes very fast instead. These passing notes are not necessarily played as part of the scale, but just to get the feel of sliding up and down to the note you want to end the lick-on.
Ray Child, Errol’s Band were great examples of this technique.
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