Guitar > Bend Techniques > Bends
Bends are probably one of the first techniques that a lead guitarist will learn. They are used a lot in rock and blues, but you'll find them in jazz and other styles as well. A string bend is exactly what it sounds like. You take a fretted note and you bend the string to produce a pitch that's higher than the note you're fretting. Bends are a great way to add expression to notes. Instead of just landing on a note directly, "scooping" up to a note adds a little flavor to it. You hear note bending on a lot of instruments including saxophone, voice, and a lot of wind instruments. Bending makes a note almost cry or speak.
You can bend the string upward or downward and the effect is exactly the same. Some people prefer to bend one way over the other. Generally, you'll want to bend the 6th string (low E) downward to avoid bending the string off of the fretboard. You'll probably want to bend the high E-string upward for the same reason. One of the problems that my beginner students have with bending is keeping the note ringing in the middle and at the end of the bend. The trick is to keep your finger pressure maintained as you bend the note. In fact, if you add a little more pressure as you bend the note, you will have an easier time sustaining the tone during the bend. One thing to try and avoid is letting you left-hand fingers go underneath the adjacent strings during the bend. It's okay to bend the adjacent strings as well if you're not using them.
Larger bends can be achieved with lower gauges strings. Shredders typically use light gauged strings with the high E-string being a .009. Jazz guitarists use thicker strings so they cannot achieve the bending agility that guys like Joe Satriani and Steve Vai can. Bending on an acoustic guitar is typically more difficult than on an electric guitar because acoustic guitars tend to use thicker gauged strings.
A lot of guitarists will use multiple fingers when executing a bend in order to gain more leverage on the strings. My favorite finger to bend on is the ring finger because I can place my middle and index fingers on the frets before the fret of the ring finger to make the bend easier. Since placing fingers on frets below an already fretted note doesn't effect the sound, you might has well use them if you're not using them for something else.
There are many types of bends, and I'll discuss them over a series of lessons. The type of bends that I'm referring to in this lesson are the standard types of bends. You can bend a string to different pitches. Bends are denoted in tablature several different ways. My favorite is a curvy arrow that points upwards from the fretted note, but sometimes you'll see a slur between two numbers with a "B" noted above it to show that the first note should be bent to sound like the second note.
The two types of standard bends you're mostly likely to encounter are half-step bends and full-step bends. You will occasionally see bends that go higher than full step bends, and you'll also see bends that are less than half-step bends. A half-step bend (denoted by a 1/2 above the curvy arrow) means to bend the fretted note so that it sounds like the note one fret higher than it (a half step). A full-step bend (denoted by a 1 above the curvy arrow) means to bend the fretted note so that it sounds like the note two frets higher than it (a whole step). 1 1/2 step bends means three frets, 2 step bends mean four frets, and so on. You'll also encounter quarter-step bends (1/4 above the arrow) which mean to bend between 0 and 1/2 steps. These are mostly used to add expression to a note. The shape and curve of the arrow can also tell you a lot about how fast or slow to bend a note. An arrow with a large slope means to bend the note faster than if the arrow had a smaller slope.
The one big thing to really watch out for when you're bending a note is your intontation, or how in tune the bent note is. You want to make sure you're not bending notes out of tune unless you intentionally want that effect.
Check out these 10 progressive exercises to improve your pull-off technique. Try using different fingers for each exercise so that you can develop strength in all fingers. Make sure that you're bending the notes to the appropriate tones and try to use exact intontation. This is the time to start using your ears to make sure that you're executing each bend properly. If you cannot execute a bend because your fingers aren't strong enough or your string won't support it, don't sweat it. Just bend as far as you're comfortable.
