Article by Mac Wheeler
I am going to come right out and say it, I am a bender, I don't know why, there is just something about it but I love bending!
Every time I bend, I lift my left leg off the floor; the height to which I lift my leg is dictated by the extent of the bend. This has been no shortage of fun for friends and family who have come to see me play over the years; I am told it looks pretty funny.
If you really want to learn to play blues guitar like a pro, you are definitely going to need to learn how to play a hot bend.
As blues players, when playing a pentatonic scale, we are extremely lucky by having a host of extremely accessible and effective bends at our disposal; this is due to the fact that we are missing two notes from our scale, which can be exploited by introducing bends that infer the missing notes without playing them fully.
The traditional blues bend is a measly quarter tone, just take a listen to the old acoustic players, starting with Robert Johnson and moving forward, they all played quarter tone bends, probably because their instruments were far less versatile than the ones we play today.
Modern blues players have taken things much further, and will typically play not only quarter tone bends, but half tone, full tone and sometimes larger bends.
A half tone bend is exactly as the name implies, we will bend a string from the starting note, up half a tone. There is a great passing note in the pentatonic scale, the flattened 5th, which makes an awesome half tone bend.
A full tone bend will see the guitar player bend a string from one note on the scale, up an entire tone to the next note, obviously this only works for notes that are a tone apart.
As blues players we tend to truly abuse our G and B strings, as there are three bends in a seven note run available to us, starting with the half tone bend on the G and then continuing to a full tone on both the B and top E strings, I don't think you will ever find a blues player who does not exploit this at every possible chance.
If you want to learn to play blues guitar, you are going to have to learn how to play a mean bend, the good news is that blues players tend to want to play the blues for a reason, and one of the common reasons seems to be that we all appreciate certain bends at certain tones, in many ways these bends define the blues as much as a 12 bar rhythm does.
About the Author
Don't miss out on more about power chords and loads of extra free guitar tips at Guitar String Bends
Mac Wheeler is a contributor to http://www.LearningAcousticGuitar.net where he provides great guitar playing secrets, articles, videos and reviews.
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