Bends

patb

Blues Junior
Working on BGU2 Solo 3 and listening to Griff's bends. He gets a distinct sound. Not linear but a bell curve type sound. The bend seems to scoop out the sound on the way up. Hard to describe but if you really listen to his bends you will hear it.
It would be really helpful if he would spend some time explaining that. If he already has, where?
Griff, you out there?
Thanks,
Pat
 

Elio

Student Of The Blues
Working on BGU2 Solo 3 and listening to Griff's bends. He gets a distinct sound. Not linear but a bell curve type sound. The bend seems to scoop out the sound on the way up. Hard to describe but if you really listen to his bends you will hear it.
It would be really helpful if he would spend some time explaining that. If he already has, where?
Griff, you out there?
Thanks,
Pat

Here's one explanation from Griff.

I remember having a lesson with my local instructor a few years ago and specifically talking about this. He described it exactly the same way, instead of a linear start-to-finish bend, the idea is to scoop out the target note. It took a lot of listening and trial-and-error to make my bends sound less mechanical. One thing I started to realize after listening and trying to duplicate the sound is that many times, the starting point is a partial bend. So going from a C to a D, might start at a slightly sharp C, rather than exactly the C.

 
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david moon

Attempting the Blues
You should have a target note when bending. A half step, whole step or maybe more. Not just shoving the string sideways, but to a definite target. In the video posted above, the speed of making the bend varies, it could be immediately bend to the new note, or slow and milk it. Then you have the SRV/Albert King approach of playing multiple bends and teasing toward the final target note.

Don't know if this helps.
 

MikeS

Student Of The Blues
Staff member
There is no one right answer to how to bend because it really depends on what you want to hear. It's not to a random note. You have to hit the correct pitch... usually... You sometimes want just give it a tiny bend. Griff calls it the blues squeeze, but that's more of an accent like vibratto.
A quick bend up to pitch gets you one sound and a slow move from the original not up to the bent pitch gets you another and everything in between. They each have their place.
 
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