Let's take a look at some half-step bends. Half-steps can be done exactly the same way as you do whole steps. It's just your target note is half step up, one fret. So let's do a half-step bend here from the ninth fret of the second string.
So here is our target note, put my pinky here on the tenth fret, and it requires just less pressure. Now the thing about half-step bend is often times in a lot of guitar applications, you are going to be called on to use just one finger to do the half-step bend leaving the third finger to finish out notes of the phrase or in the scale.
So bending with one finger is you may really place your first finger on the ninth fret of the second string, and you're still going to use your thumb here as leverage. But, since you don't have to come up as much, there is not the same danger of running into open strings. You don't have to push the note up as far.
So what I am doing, is as I push the note up, I am using a fleshy part of my finger here just to touch the third string, so it doesn't make a sound. Just a slightest touch, and for some of you, you may find that just using your nail, as you push up, we will get the job done.
Then sliding with the third and second finger, sliding from the fourteenth fret and the thirteenth fret of strings three and two. Start with the fourteenth fret on the third string and you're going to bend up a half step.
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