Guitar Tricks Online Guitar Lessons

Intro to Boosting Your Bends

 
Not Helpful
Helpful
Very Helpful

One of the greatest things about the guitar is the ability to bend strings and how, where, and when we choose to do that makes up a huge part of any guitar players signature sound.

At this point you're already pretty comfortable with basic whole and half step bending, but the good news of the day is that it doesn't end there! There are endless possibilities with bending in a rock context, and in this tutorial we'll explore some of these.

Hopefully this will open up the door to a million new licks, sounds and tricks for you, and you can start developing a signature bending style of your own. Let's get started!

Instructor Anders Mouridsen
Tutorial:
Boost Your Rock Bending!
Styles:
Difficulty:
download lesson open guitar tuner

You need to be registered to ask our instructors a question.

Questions & Answers

1 week ago
Any advice on getting the guitar to have more sustain? My gear is limited, but I do have a Honey Pot Fuzz pedal, which when the sustain is turned all the way up helps some, but not much. I do not get much sound out of bending on the 14th fret and any sound goes away completely if I try to transition the bend to the 16th fret. I am using a Fender Stratocaster and have about the same results with sustain on the bridge and neck pickups.
Mike Olekshy 4 days ago

Hey there - thanks so much for your question! Yes, you definitely should be getting more sustain out of that setup! I'm curious what amp you're using? Are you using a newer digital modelling amp, like a Katana or Spark? If so, alot of the "lead" presets that come in those amps have a noise gate engaged, that will notoriously cut off any single notes that are trying to sustain. So, if you have one of those, if you can figure out how to turn off the noise gate, that would help. If not - and you're using a regular amp - the only other thing I can suggest is to dig into picking the note as hard as you can on the bend to get that note ringing. Also make sure you are using optimized technique when bending the note - eg. your other fretting fingers scooched in behind the bending finger to help with strength and control - as well as making sure you are muting the adjacent strings that move with the bent string. If none of these suggestions work - consider making a video and submitting to our User Feedback section. I can have a look and we can go from there: https://www.guitartricks.com/feedback Hope this helps!!