Bending and touching

It used to happen to me a lot, not so much now, i think the answer is just to practice! Practice the bend slowly, taking care not to touch the other strings. A great bend is definitely an art form! Some of the other guys on the forum might have specific 'tips' on how to stop the noise, but in my experience it is something that is solved with a bit of dedicated practice.

the easiest way is by muting the strings you're not playing. you can do this with either hand and it takes a fair bit of practise, but its worth it. muting with you L. hand - use the ring finger to do the bend, with your middle finger supporting it. then use your index resting lightly as a sort of bar-chord position but light enough not to be fretted the strings. you'll hear a lot of players doing this for musical effect in the blues (thinking Hendrix and SRV particularly here) as you can strum the muted strings before the bend to get a percussive sound from your guitar.

muting with your R. hand - rest the plam of you hand lightly at the bridge, and then pick the note. the amount of pressure you need to apply to the string depends on stuff like how your guitar is set up. you can also do this form of muting to change the tone of notes being played - listen to some Al DiMeola for this effect being exploited to maximum effect, since he is generally credited with having 'invented'/being the master of this technique. he should be on youtube.

and with practise you'll (a) get these techniques down so it sounds great and (b) become more proficient in executing bends so you're creating less of a sound issue even without any muting being applied.

hth

use the ring finger to do the bend, with your middle finger supporting itAs Scrybe eluded to, you can use a second finger to add to the bend; it will be easier to bend the string, & youi will have more control with it. It won't take too long/much practice until you get it clean. :)

Palm Muting! I love palm muting, try playing a power chord riff whilst palm muting, sounds dead good, sure it would work for the bend too!

David

the only problem with plam muting is if you mute the string you are bending - depending on your guitar/amp/etc setup, you might not have enough sustain, causing the note to break off prematurely. although this does, of course, depend on how hard you're muting as well. you can use palm muting to dampen the surrounding strings though, but muting with the left hand is IMO easier. personally, I tend to use both pretty automatically (at least I did when I tried observing myself - this whole answering-newbie-questions thing is great for getting me to focus more on bits of my playing that have become second nature, its great). I'd suggest working on both techniques as they'll both come in handy (pun intended) in your playing 'life' and then going with whichever one you prefer.

Palm muting is a skill that i developed, and had to quite quick while playing in a punk band, when playin un-palm muted power chords i mute the strings that dont need to be played with the middle or ring finger on my left hand. Im only just starting bending and vibrato on my scale solos so ill get back to you on how i get along and the muting technique i find favourite.

David

I didn't read all of the other posts so someone may have said this but in case they did not here you go! Bend with your 3rd finger and use your 1st finger mute the strings you do not want to hear.