Vibrato & Reading Guitar Tab

Video Transcript

"MICHAEL PLUNKETT: Hello. This is Michael Plunkett on behalf of Expert Village. We're going to look at a new term for guitar now. This one's called "vibrato." You would see it marked in the tablature short with "vib.", V-I-B. The term "vibrato" refers to, actually, in a sense vibrating around the pitch. So, for instance, if you imagine our pitch here, we use whatever, and this could be done on any instrument, to go a little bit above and below the pitch, and it gives this kind of shaky or wobbly feeling. This can't actually be done on all instruments where you can't really bend the string or the note, but in the case of the guitar, we actually can do it. It's done by firmly pressing down. This really also requires the use of our fingertip on any give fret, on any given string. I'm going to start on the first one because it's the easiest to do this on. And if you hear, I pluck the string naturally, it's a very straight tone, but when I begin to shake my finger, you can hear it begin to wobble a little bit. I'm actually pulling and loosening the string slightly as I do that, which changes the pitch. If I were to put it in the context of a song, it might sound something like this. So, you can see the shaking in my hand, and you can hear the shaking in the sound, too. It really gives it that wobbly, almost a buoyant or watery kind of sound. So, that is called the vibrato."