Jack here, jbf music and guitar lessons.
This quick guitar trick is on behind the nut bends, you can see them in action in my licks
from Friends lesson, link up in the top right. For further study, I’d also really recommend
checking out John 5’s song behind the nut love. Again, link up in the top right and
in the comments below.
That song is in an open tuning, open E I believe, which really works well with this technique,
but what I’m going do to show you here are some idea in standard tuning, cause at the
end of the day (ya basic) tuning is probably easier to get he hang of.
so, the basic technique is you just push down on the string behind the nut; bend the nut
bend- somewhat self-explanatory.
You can use it on an open string, feedback or a sustained note like this. A natural harmonic.
Or even a chord.
I’m just going to be bending a semi tone at frist, partly because my finger can’t
do much more, partly to keep this video farily snappy and focused, but this is just to highlight
that you could bend further, if you so desire.
The coolest stuff comes in when you combine these idea I just outlined. The harder you
push, the further the note goes. Just like bending on the fret board normally.
You can use it on an open string, like I did there, you could do it on feedback or a sustained
note or harmonic. Em, you can even a chord.
Makes it sounds a tiny bit like you've got a chours pedal on or something like that.
So, initially here, I’m just going to be bending a semi tone at first here, partly
because my finger can’t do much more, and partly to keep this video fairly snappy and
focused, but this is just to highlight that you can bend it further.
The coolest stuff happends when you combine these idea I just outlined.
For example, lets play a chord but instead of using the behind the nut bend as vibrato,
let’s just poke at one note. If we take a C major 7, right, if we push on the b string,
if becomes C major. You can pick at this as well. Or. We can use the same idea to turn
and Asus2 into an A minor. Just by pushing down on the b string behind the nut, raising
it by about a semi tone.
Now this would be a good example of where you could bend it higher to get an A major.
So say we just fingered an A major chord like this. So I've got a bit more strength in these
fingers to push it up a tone. It's got that kinda happy, country sort of sound.
Now we can do a similar thing on, em, these strings here with our D minor. So we could
take a Dsus 2 and push down in the e string a semi tone; I find this one quite difficult,
so I apologise if the intonation is rather sloppy!
Eh, we can also do the idea idea with an F major 7 and turn it into and F major. So all
I'm doing is pushing down on the e string behind the nut to raise it's pitch and make
it, hopefully sound, like and F major.
Eh, for a bluesier sound, what we could do is take an E minor chord and finger at the
G string to raise it up to make it an E major, so it's the same idea, but just pushing down
on the G string.
Makes it sounds a bit more like a pedal steel at times. It's got this really cool effect
and if you apply something like finger picking, you can get some pretty cool ideas. You know
I'm just kind of doing a basic pattern there. And pushing down on the string to get that
bluesy minor major sound.
Ok, I'm really trying to keep this trick quick, but lets combine some more ideas, lets take
harmonics and bend some notes. So say we took a D, which we can play with harmonics on the
7th fret here, we bend the B string up a semitone, we turn it in to a Dsus4, and back again.
We can do the same thing with a G, same notes, but on the 5th fret. So you're kind of getting,
but with harmonics.
You could also use tapped harmonics. For more information on those; check out the link up
in the top right there.
So if we take something like this, just bending the G string there. And essentially what I'm
doing there is moving from like an E minor triad to C major.
Pretty cool!
If you want to take to take this further you can get a B bender, or if you want to manipulate
the strings from here. You can actually get special tuners that do it, they cost a lot
per pop, but Guitarist Adrian Legg; who I wasactually luckly enough to briefly study
under uses them to great effect. Link up in the top right it if you want to check him
out. Fantastic player, well worth listening to.
To recap: you can bend the string here, I’d guess up to 3 semi tones at most, depending
on your setup, you know how much tension you've got here, how strong you are. You can use
it for: vibrato, feedback or sustained notes, can use it with harmonics, use it on chords
and also combine some of these ideas. With the chords in particular, you can experiment
with resolving the chord and playing with the tension and release, a bit like I did
with those eh, sus 4 harmonics there.
Cool, so as always, I really hope this video has been useful for you guys; both speedy
and informative; in that you’ve learned a cool, albeit somewhat gimmicky trick, and
have a good idea of how to use it, some example for further study and can incorporate this
in to your own craft. If that has been the case, you've taken something away a new bit
of information, want to show support for the channel, please do consider to share, like
comment, sub, if you feel so inclined.
Cheers guys