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Country Lead Guitar – How to bend your strings in tune and play exciting solos on your Guitar
By Mike Hayes | July 13, 2009
Almost very guitar player bends their strings however only a very
select few bend their notes in tune.
It looks pretty straight forward, grab a handful of strings and
push them as far as you can, well that’s what it looks like on
the video!
Unfortunately, today’s current crop of guitar players rely so
heavily on visual reference units e.g., electronic guitar tuners
to tell them if their guitar is in tune that their ear (audio
reference) has become extremely lazy.
Once a guitar player plugs into a electronic guitar tuner and
verifies that the open strings are at the correct pitch,
(according to the visual readout on the screen) the guitar player
considers the job of intonation complete.
A good guitar player is always making slight compensations in
intonation to make certain their notes blend musically with the
other members of the ensemble.
When you bend strings you need to be listening attentively to
the pitch of each note. Essentially when a string is bent the
pitch of the note is raised, how far and how accurately the pitch
is raised depends on the skill of the guitarist.
Take a moment to consider how a violinist, trumpet or trombone
player must accurately pre-hear the pitch of the next note they
are about to play.
If a trumpet player simply pressed a valve down and hoped for the
best any number of notes would pop out of their horn. Guitar
players need to learn the exact same skills as other
instrumentalists.
Here’s how we would develop our intonation skills.
(1) Use a familiar set of notes – the major diatonic scale is an
ideal place to start as we already know the sound of this scale.
If you are unfamiliar with the term, “major diatonic”
scale, it’s the … do, ray, me, fa, so, la, te, do scale most
people learn on their school recorder, fife or at piano lessons.
(2) Play the scale at a familiar pitch – the major diatonic
scale in the key of “C” is the most common pitch musicians learn
when they are beginning to learn a musical instrument.
(3) Practice bending semitones – a semitone is the musical
distance of measurement from one fret to the next.
The idea is to learn to correctly bend semitones before trying to
play larger musical intervals on the guitar.
(4) Play the first four notes of the C major diatonic scale on
the third string as follows:
C – 3rd string, fifth fret, D – 3rd string, seventh fret, E – 3rd
string, ninth fret and F – 3rd string, tenth fret.
Play the scale very slowly, paying close attention to the sound
of each note.
The semi-tone exists between the notes E & F.
Next, play the same series of notes only bending the “E” note to
the “F” note.
Like this … pick the note C, pick the note D, pick the note E
and bend the string until it sounds the pitch of the note F.
Repeat this process of playing C, D, E, F listening to each note
carefully then repeat this note sequence bending between to the
notes E and F.
You can develop this exercise further by playing the remaining
notes of the C major diatonic scale on the second string and
bending between the notes “B” and “C”.
As you refine these important skills your solos will sound much
more professional and musical.
And now I’d like to invite you to get free access to my “How To
Remember 1,000 Songs” eCourse. You can download the course for
free at: http://www.guitarcoaching.com
From Mike Hayes – The Guitar Coaching Guy & the Express Guitar
System
http://www.GuitarCoaching.com
http://AdvancingGuitaristProgram.com
Topics: Country Guitar | No Comments »
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