Pieter Saayman wrote: Can anyone please share some advise on string bending technique? Bending without letting other string ring, getting clean tone, getting the bent note to sustain better, finger & bending exercises etc.

Any advise would be much appreciated.

Thanks

I second that...also interested.........

I think a lot of it is getting your fingers has parallel to the fretboard as possible. Naturally you kind of flatten your hand out to make the bending of the string easier but it opens a lot of doors for your other fingers to brush the other strings.

Try this

Hi guys,

This might not be in the book, but hear goes......

I think to start the process of prefecting bending - because it is a process - just bend the string and keep bending to get the necessary strength and control in your fingers. Also, listen really closely and make sure that you are hitting the note that you are targeting, because nothing sounds worse than inaccurate bending. Once you've got the strength and control e.g. you can put vibrato on a bent note, muffling the other strings will be a breeze.

Go for it - nothing beats the Benz!

Also bend with more than one finger at once. It helps your finger that is on the note. So if you were, say using your ring finger to bend, put your middle and index fingers behind this finger (obviously won't change the pitch), to help your ring finger.

Another thing people neglect to look at when bending is which direction you are bending (down or up). On the three higher pitched strings (e, B, G), I would bend up, and lower pitched strings (D, A, E) I would bend down. This is just so you don't run out of fretboard when bending.

And lastly, like a big wide vibrato, there's alot of wrist movement involved.

Off the top of my head, I'd say:

Sustain will probably come from some vibrato, which is not an easy technique to perfect in bends. I think there are a thousand and one ways to implement vibrato in a bend: mine is to release my thumb from the back of the neck and actually only have the tip/s of my finger/s in contact with the guitar fretboard at the time that I'm pushing the string/s up and down. This probably takes more arm action/muscle than a lot of other people would like, but it feels and sounds good to me and I'm used to it, so I don't get very tired. Find whatever way feels comfortable to you, but this is probably something to look into once you've mastered ordinary bending.

When it comes to not striking other strings, either of your hands can be involved in keeping everything else quiet - free fingers on the left hand, or your palm/fingers from your right hand, or just bending really cleanly so you don't touch anything else. Sometimes, to get a full-tone bend, you'll notice your middle finger's fingertip, for instance, is going to touch the string above or below (depending on which way you prefer to bend) - it's possible to even keep pushing that string silently up or down as you bend, provided you don't let it ring out again once you release the bend, or lose your grip on the bent string because you've crashed into the other string. But that's just practice. (Once you start doing some violent vibrato, avoiding touching other strings will become more important. You can even employ the technique of literally parting/dampening the upper and lower strings with your right hand's fingers to prevent that kind of thing.)

Practice will also tell you how far to push each string up or down to get to the note you want - with time, you'll know how far to go automatically (it can feel very different from guitar to guitar). Also, if you have a floating tremolo, this can introduce nightmares of finding the note, especially if you're playing double-bends and hoping to find the correct note on other strings while you bend.

I don't agree with the advice to get your fingers as parallel to the fretboard as possible, but that may be personal taste. My advice would actually be to get as perpendicular as you can manage, because you're less likely to accidentally touch other strings that way. It will require more strength, but, to me, seems something to strive for.

Aldertguitarist wrote: Also bend with more than one finger at once. It helps your finger that is on the note. So if you were, say using your ring finger to bend, put your middle and index fingers behind this finger (obviously won't change the pitch), to help your ring finger.

Another thing people neglect to look at when bending is which direction you are bending (down or up). On the three higher pitched strings (e, B, G), I would bend up, and lower pitched strings (D, A, E) I would bend down. This is just so you don't run out of fretboard when bending.

And lastly, like a big wide vibrato, there's alot of wrist movement involved.

++;

It also helps to dedicate some practice time to bending with all three "bending fingers" (fingers 1,2 and 3) individually. Bending with just finger 1 can be particularly tricky, but is a common technique when playing the blues. You can even bend with your pinky (I do sometimes), but fingers 1, 2 and 3 are the main ones. You need to build some individual strength, so like Aldertguitarist says, practice with your third finger first (reinforced with fingers 1 and 2).

Wrist movement is important, but a little hard to explain without a video. When bending, it's important to not try to have all the force come from your fingers, especially in big bends. Try keep your bending fingers almost "locked" in place on the string, and then rotate your wrist (you will feel tension in your bicep) to get the fingers moving up (or down) on the fretboard. This will do a lot to help you avoid injuring the ligaments / tendons in your fingers. It can also help your vibrato technique.

To keep a bent note singing, it helps to apply a little vibrato to the bent note, but this is (for me) the single most difficult bending-associated technique (aside from crazy Donahue tricks) and is something you probably want to work on after the basics are firmly in place. There are some good YouTube videos on this.

Also: get your guitar set-up properly. There's nothing harder than trying to bend strings on an improperly set-up guitar (I know - I actually hurt myself quite badly trying to do this). Light guage strings to start.

Finally: try and steal some techniques from your fave guitarists. Santana is a good place to start: lots of his stuff involves repeated bends on the low frets near the nut, which is a lot tougher than bends higher up on the neck - your hand and wrist are in a more awkard position, and it's harder to bend the string closer to the extremities.

@Stratisfear
Your vibrato technique actually sounds a lot like mine, and a lot like Clapton's: he also takes his whole hand off the neck a lot. ?

And which strings do you bend up and which stings do you bend down?

Ray wrote: And which strings do you bend up and which stings do you bend down?

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I assume you mean physically rather than musically - IE "down" is towards the 1st string, up towards the 6th.

Well clearly you have no choices with the 1st and the 6th (unless you have a wide fingerboard and a weird string spacing). Other than that I don't see it matters that much, though obviously you have more room to bend the 2nd string up than down.

The master bender himself, Jerry Donohue, goes both ways (stop your sniggering there in the back) and if you want to take things to that level you'd need to.

There's a clip of him been posted to the forum at least twice. Search for "Donohue". Don't get too disheartened.

That same clip also shows the other way of bending - which is behind the nut.

Interestingly, in view of other posts here, Donohue quite clearly uses wrist and forearm and not just fingers.

X-rated Bob wrote:
Interestingly, in view of other posts here, Donohue quite clearly uses wrist and forearm and not just fingers.

Just to stress this point again.

Using my wrist to provide the "power" behind the bend opened up some bending ideas that I didn't think I could do, because the old way of trying to use my fingers only was just too painful after doing it for half an hour. Cue the tendonitis...

Interestingly, the first place I ever saw the "behind the nut" technique was on John Mayer's Where The Light Is DVD. During the "Gravity" solo, he plays whole melodies using harmonics and behind the nut bending. Amazing, amazing stuff, but obviously not a "new" idea.

Talking of Donohue....

Interesting how he talks about not realising that Clarence White was using a b-bender. The first time I heard Donohue (on a Joan Armatrading record) I was convinced that he MUST be using a b-bender - but he wasn't.

X-rated Bob wrote: Interesting how he talks about not realising that Clarence White was using a b-bender. The first time I heard Donohue (on a Joan Armatrading record) I was convinced that he MUST be using a b-bender - but he wasn't.

I have a GT magazine issue where there is an article dedicated to Donohue bending techniques. The author repeatedly mentions how you should NOT try them without decent bending fundamentals (so I haven't tried them yet ?), and leaves out some of the more superhuman ideas.

I jumped the gun a bit with that Jerry Donohue link. It's not simply/soley a bending tutorial. Clearly the title is more about Donohue himself than what he's teaching here. Not that there's not a lot of good stuff in there, but a lot of it (eg banjo rolls) is nothing to do with bending.

Many appy polly loggies.

What i did to learn bending somewhat decent was to start of with one note,usually easier around the 5th-9th fret, play a semi tone up and a tone up. Then go back to the note you started with and replicate the semi tone and full tone with bends (semi-tone = half bend, tone = full bend). Or something like that....... i know what i mean!!!! ?

Get yourself a DVD and watch.

I am having a good look at David Gilmour's Remember that night, the camera is permanently on his fretboard during the solos.

I did this previously with Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight", on the 24 Nights DVD, you can see exactly how he does the solo, and there is a bend in that one too!!

Donovan Banks wrote: Try this

This vid has helped me a lot with technique, thanks for adding it!

Yeah. I was going to say that you don't need to go much further than the justin guitar vids on bending. He even explains a technique for vibrato on the bent string. I'm still really struggling with getting a quick, even vibrato on the bent string. Because the vibrato comes more from releasing, and then re-applying the tension, almost the opposite of vibrato on an unbent string - conceptually.

The key thing here (as always) is practise. Justin's technique is a great, standard way of going about things. But then you need to practise constantly. You can then begin copying the vibrato of people who're really hot. Clapton. B.B. King. Peter Green. A lot of a player's personal style can come out through their vibrato, so it makes sense to experiment.

singemonkey wrote: The key thing here (as always) is practise. Justin's technique is a great, standard way of going about things. But then you need to practise constantly. You can then begin copying the vibrato of people who're really hot. Clapton. B.B. King. Peter Green. A lot of a player's personal style can come out through their vibrato, so it makes sense to experiment.

I can't get that BB King / Hendrix style vibrato right at all, it's like a combo of horizontal / vertical vibrato, and it looks and sounds amazing.