Jack here, jbf music and guitar lessons, in this quick guitar trick I’m looking at compound
bends, double bends, bends within bends, meta bends, or what ever you want to call them;
you know the ones where you hold a bend then bend it further? Yeah those! Out of curiosity,
what other names have you guys heard to describe these sorts of bends? I mean they are really
under used and can add a whole lot of emotion to your phrasing, and improvisation.
*Plays The Thrill Is Gone - BB King*
It’s this second bar that we need to focus on. Bending up by small increments, a ¼ tone,
up to a ½, full, then 1 and ½, and back down to a full. Start slowly and try and get
the pitch right- just like you would with normal bending.
What also works for me is just slowly bending up in one fluid motion, something like this.
So rather than thinking about each individual note, I'm just bending up.
*Bends Guitar Strings*
It sounds a bit more authentic to the actual recording.
Try and commit the strength your finger exerts for each next step of the bend to memory,
and in time it should just become muscle memory; which is the real goal for any new technique.
There is a bit more leeway with this one; the bluesy quarter tones mean you can be a
bit less accurate with your intonation and it won’t be too noticeable.
Em, it's debatable whether this 1/4 tone is in there, but to me, when I listened closely
it sounded like ti was a little bit sharper than just the standard 15th fret.
Another thing to do with these is to work out the target note in advance, so in effect
what we're kind of doing is
*Plays guitar*
If that’s sound good and accurate, what about a more difficult one, probably one of
the most famous ones. From Dave Gilmour’s solo in the wall part 2. Got a few sneaky
tricks here, so if you’ve tried this before and struggled, I’m fairly confident at least
one of these tactics should work for you.
*Plays Pink Floyd The Wall guitar solo*
Bending further this time, a full bend and then up to 2 tones, these are the notes you
want to try to pitch.
You might find your fingers go under the strings, when you're doing this, so under these ones
here, em, if you're doing this just try and watch out for excess string noise when releasing
it. You know these kind of, ringing out like that- just watch out for that kind of thing.
I tend to support the bend with my 1st finger as well, normally I’d use it to mute the
strings, but here it helps having that extra support for the bigger bend.
Eh, so Sneaky trick #1; eh if you're finding going *bends string* difficult. What you can
do is use your trem block provided it’s floating; you can lean your right palm on
the tremolo block a little bit to raise the pitch, make it a bit sharp, just a little
bit. So there I didn't have to exert half as much force with my left hand cause I just
lent on the trem block a little bit and sharpened it a tiny bit.
Also watch out for the bend in that last bar, your hand will probably be inclined to over
bend it, having had to exert more force than usual in the previous bar. Adding some vibrato
with the bar here is probably easier than with the fingers, and more stylistically accurate
to the source material, so feel free to get some of that in there!
*plays guitar solo*
Full bend, 2 tone bend, 2 and a ½ tone bend- madness! This is a big bend, if you use lighter
strings this bend might not be too tricky; I normally use 10s and wouldn’t like to
have to do this with too much regularity. Luckily, this is where sneaky trick #2 comes
in. Use your right hand. *bends string right hand/fails*. Yeah, not like that, obviously.
You still do the bend normally but reinforce it with the right hand, like this.
Try and get that a bit better. So all I'm doing there, is I'm pulling the string I'm
bending with my right hand. You could bend up here, then continue, the next two bends
with your right hand, or you could do the first kind of big bend, second one and just
finish off with this one. Em, it's difficult to demonstrate this slowly because you run
out of sustain, so I'll do it a bit quicker there.
And hopefully you can get all I'm doing is pulling on the string here. It's a lot more
intuitive than you might think to get the pitch, just trust your ears and they'll probably
be able to do it, eh, your right hand really helps reinforce the lefts bend here.
Is it cheating? Maybe, but it looks cool, is a practical way round a problem and generally
results in a well intonated and controlled bend. You can try and get it with the left
hand and have it sound off, or bring in some support and really nail it. I know what I’d
opt for. But I’ll leave the decision up to you.
These example show you can use smaller ¼ tone bends in compound bends or massive 2
½ tone bends, and they both sound great. Just remember to try and play in key and know
what note you’re targeting. Wildly bending and hoping for the best will likely not result
in the most pleasing of guitar solos. Or maybe it will, like statically speaking, if you
just randomly bent notes, eventually you should land a perfect solo. Quite a risk to undertaken
though!
Eh, To recap, take your time and get the intonation sounding decent. Use the tremolo block, or
right hand if your left hand isn’t consistent enough. And have a good idea of what note
you’re aiming for.
Cool, so as always I really hope this video has been useful for you guys, in that this
has been both speedy and informative, you’ve picked a up a new trick, ideas, or way of
overcoming a previous obstacle and can work this your own technique and craft.
If that has been the case you’ve taken away something away, want to show support for the
channel, give it a wee pop in the youtube algorithm, please do consider to share, like
, comment and subscribe, if you feel so inclined. Cheers guys.