explain to me the art of

[jkusch82]

adding vibrato to a full bend, or a full plus half step bend....this is one of the most hard skills that I am tryin to improve apon lately...

 

Whenever I try and do it, I always (well even when I just do bends) seem to not mute the strings above our below that well. I'm tryin to use my picking hand to help and other fingers on the fretting hand to help, but its just not going well for me. What do you to help with this problem?

[gennation]

It sounds like this is a question about muting.

Many people go through a lot of pain learning how to mute, they play their note THEN they try and mute the strings around it.

Try this instead...

mute EVERYTHING, then try to make your one (or howver many) strings ring out. IOW, start with everything muted then unmute the notes you want to ring out.

It's kind of the reverse of what everyone does/thinks at first. But, once you learn how to mute the "mute THEN unmute" method is the functional way it's done.

[LoboR1]

I recently started practicing this as well. Its hard. My normal vibrato is nothing to write home about, but it coming along. For some reason, its easer for me to do it with the index finger and gets increasingly difficult to vibrato as I switch fingers moving towards the pinky.

I usually bend most notes with my ring finger, but trying to vibrato a bent note properly is not easy. Mine sound sloppy and it feels as if there is "nowhere for my hand to go" or "no room" since I have already rotated my fretting hand towards the neck of the guitar with the original bend. I seem to do better vibrato if I start out pulling down on the strings towards the ground as opposed to pushing up towards the ceiling. However, this doesn't really work for the E or B strings since they are already close to the bottom of the neck and can easily slip of the neck with a full bend downwards. I too get the other strings making noise and will have to learn how to mute them better! Damn..lots to practice.

I also have another problem that is annoying me when it comes to bends. Take for example an upward bend of the D note on the G string 7th fret. From time to time, when bending the note, the D string, which is being bent as well but not sounded, will "snap" or "pop" under my finger and come to rest under my finger next to the G string making a bad noise at the same time. Does that make sense? In the original bend the D string is at a higher position against my finger than the G string. The G is under my finger since I am freting a note, and the D is sort of beside my finger at its normal resting string height. As I bend the G string, the D string gets bent as well which is normal. I just can't figure out why it "pops" or snaps" at times and not at others when doing the same amount of bending. Its obviously a flaw in my technique that creeps out frome time to time or else it would always happen, or never happen.

Any thoughts on what I am doing to cause this?

ps...Gennation if you read this....your site rocks. I have spent a good amount of time on the pentatonic stuff and am loving it. Thanks.