Bend and Vibrato

well, like i said before, back when i was rockclimbing, i could support my full body weight with grips that were such that my hands were on an upward slant to the verticle, like a / shape, where i would be on the left. and i've seen people that had done it for years hold on to grips that looked like they were barely there at all, and hang on like it was nothing. i can hang onto a nice grip with 3 fingers for a good while, which means each finger is supporting 60+ pounds. so although it's axial, which is obviously not the same, it is within the same realm, and i really believe that one pound is within reason.

I agree with Ande. You guys are picking this apart WAY too much and it's ending up being too complicated for the younger players to understand. I've been playing for 50 years and it's too much for ME to grasp.

ok, here is a simple summary of this thread:

there's back and forth vibrato. you can go pretty fast, but it's fairly subtle. it's used more in classical music. there's an argument over whether this goes sharp and flat of the original note, or just sharp. i say both.

there's up and down vibrato. this can be pushed up towards the high strings or pulled down towards the low strings, or you can do it bb king style and turn your wrist very quickly like turning a doorknob or making the "ehh, either way" or "comme ci comme ca" or "mas o menos" hand gesture with your finger being a pivot. this is used more in modern music, and you can get much wider vibrato, but like it's been pointed out, only pulls the note sharp.

you can also bend a note up and then put vibrato on it, and with that, you can have it go both sharp and flat of the note you're going for.

if you have a guitar with a tremolo, or a floppy neck, you can pull all the other notes flat by bending up a note severely.

In Rock/Blues soloing it is ESSENTIAL to have the bend/vibrato technique, with as much depth and precision as possible, really...In my opinion it worth every miniute I have ever put in to working on this, worth every miniute I will ever put in and baby there's a whole bunch more I Gotta Do!

So don't think you are wasting time learning this technique, and once learned, perfect it, why not? All our heros can do it, so why can't we??

Another long-legged post...

"Touch" (meaning vibrato, etc) is really everything on any note and on any instrument. Listen to EC's vibrato as he ends most of his licks. It's STILL "only a note"...but what a note!

Cat

ok, here is a simple summary of this thread:

there's back and forth vibrato. you can go pretty fast, but it's fairly subtle. it's used more in classical music. there's an argument over whether this goes sharp and flat of the original note, or just sharp. i say both.

there's up and down vibrato. this can be pushed up towards the high strings or pulled down towards the low strings, or you can do it bb king style and turn your wrist very quickly like turning a doorknob or making the "ehh, either way" or "comme ci comme ca" or "mas o menos" hand gesture with your finger being a pivot. this is used more in modern music, and you can get much wider vibrato, but like it's been pointed out, only pulls the note sharp.

you can also bend a note up and then put vibrato on it, and with that, you can have it go both sharp and flat of the note you're going for.

if you have a guitar with a tremolo, or a floppy neck, you can pull all the other notes flat by bending up a note severely.

Jason: a reasonable summary. maybe we (I) have made too much of it. been gigging so haven't gotten back to this. I will. when I do I'll PM you on it to spare the others ... unless I end up agreeing, I've no problem stating that publicly. there's really no emotional or ego investment in it for me -- just engineering/mechanical curiosity. and I may decide it's worth incorporating the technique in my steel string playing. TBD.
I agree with Ande. You guys are picking this apart WAY too much and it's ending up being too complicated for the younger players to understand. I've been playing for 50 years and it's too much for ME to grasp.

axissupersport: my experience is that long time, excellent players may understand how to use their instrument well in many respects, but do not necessarily understand how or why they work - especially the subtleties. and often, they even have a blatant misunderstanding of the fundamental principles. (which is why I somewhat discount Jason's Vai story, though it sounds impressive). but knowing why things work, no matter how arcane it may seem to some, may very well allow others to innovate. they get to that lightsonepiphany moment and realize, "Wow, if that's true, maybe I can do this...!" and moreover, beyond the solid fundamentals, much of how musical instruments achieve certain characteristics is not yet all that well understood. if it were, we'd be able to produce "pre-aged"/seasoned acoustic guitars made of mundane woods that sound fantastic out-of-box, modeling would sound more like the analog amplification and effects many love and the Strad violin wouldn't be such a mystery. some of us more than others travel down the OT rabbit holes occasionally. and as one of those, I apologize for being tedious. but hey, it's the internet, this IS a learning site, and we have many interests centered around our guitar playing.

Got a new tuner. Doing my standard vibrato, as Jason describes (rolling finger back and forth in the direction of the strings), though it sounds to me like it goes up and down, actually only moves up and back down to the original pitch. (Never below where it started. Which is weird, cause it certainly SOUNDS like up and down.)

Playing around, though, I CAN (though it isn't my usual vibrato) fret the string and push it towards the bridge. When I do, pitch drops about 20 cents. THis isn't something I can do IN a song, scale, or solo, though- just by itself, playing around. Can't see why it couldn't be used within songs by somebody with more practice than me, though. (Can't see what good it would do, but a lot of you guys do things I don't really understand.)

Personally, if I want a drop in pitch, I have this whammy bar...but it looks to me like it is possible to drop pitch by sliding axially on the strings. At least a little bit. (On a 24 inch scale guitar with 9s, at least.)

Best,
Ande

interesting Ande -- the rolling vibrato (more common?) going only up makes sense, as it increases string tension as you roll toward the contacting fret.

sounds like you've replicated Jason's pushing to lower the 20 cents. which string and at which fret? guitar type?

It makes sense when you describe it physically, but I could swear it sounds like...oh, never mind.

ummmm. THe guitar is a CM Marvel. If you haven't heard of one, you're not the only one. I was playing around on the A string, fifth fret. (Near the beginning of "the loner.") Seems to work having fingertip near, but not touching the fret, pushing the string towards it. Action on the guitar is fairly low, and the frets are standard-ish, not at all high. (I've noticed that with jumbos, any additional pressure goes sharp- but like you say, that's easy to understand.)

If you're curious about the guitar, it's at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31525059@N03/

Saludos,

Ande

cool guitar, Ande. looks like a cross between a Warwick Thumb Bass and and old Ibanez Musician guitar.