Bending Notes on Electric Guitar: Part 1

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is Tom. This is for Expert Village. These are shortcuts to playing the electric guitar for rock and roll. We have talked about a pentatonic scale for leads, the patterns, picking patterns, a couple of tricks. I want to show you another trick. This is bending strings, also used very much by our dear friends on the radio. And I'm going to show you three different bends that you can use. All you're really doing is you play a note, and you stretch it. And all I'm doing is just pushing it up that way. So, if this is my pentatonic scale, based on the A, okay, I'm taking this note and bending it so it's the same note as that. So, what you can do is play them together and bend it, and get used to how much bend you need to do, until they're the same note. Okay, and a good way to use this bend is--and I'm picking this one up, and then I'm picking that other one up. And try it at different speeds. Start slow so you get a nice and smooth sound--it doesn't buzz out. And then hit that other note for reference. Another bend you can do is on this third string. That's the note, and I'm bending it actually two notes out. And at lot of times you'll hear people play a bend between that and the same reference note up here. So, I'm bending it."