Gritty Blues Bends

WEBVTT
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Hey everybody, it's Friday, July 17th.
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It is actually my birthday today.
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Got a little extra time, so I thought I would go live and show you a couple things that I think are kind of cool that could help you with your soloing to try and make it again sound a little more authentic.
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And what we're gonna do is talk about adding some grit to your solos by using some unique style bands.
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So let's just go ahead and get started here and look around, okay?
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So what we're gonna do is we're gonna begin with the A minor pentatonic here, okay?
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If we find just that first position, we're gonna start there and then we're gonna start building out from there.
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So what we're gonna do here, the first thing I want to show you is this.
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I wanna show you this thing.
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So what we're gonna do there is we're gonna start in the middle of the pentatonic scale here, using 5-7-5-7.
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Okay?
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Right there.
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Thanks everybody.
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And what I want you to do here is understand that when you're in these these two strings here, the seventh fret of the fourth string is your root, right?
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There is your A.
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Okay.
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So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go to the seventh fret of the third string, and what I want you to do is do this little slide that moves from seven to eight and then back.
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Now we're sliding up to the blues note, but again, it's meant to be just kind of this aggressive kind of gritty sound.
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So a great thing that you can do if you can is add a little bit of a scrape to the beginning of it.
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And then what we're gonna do afterwards is we're gonna do a pull off.
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Now I'll show you the way I usually do this, but again, do whatever you like with this.
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But what I'm gonna do is I've got that slide.
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It's very quick, and then I'm gonna do my pull-off.
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Okay, and then after I do that pull-off, I'm gonna go to my route and I could be done.
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Hey guys, thanks for joining.
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But what I like to do is I'll I don't know why, but I always tag it like this.
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So I'm just going back.
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That's not really the point, but I just want to show you what I'm doing here.
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So there's a lot of staccato going in there.
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There's that scrape in there, the little slide.
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Again, it's not just like that.
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You're trying to add some grit, some musicality, some aggression.
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You'll even notice like that staccato stuff.
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Instead of just all the time.
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Be aware of those kinds of things.
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Again, I'm what I'm doing, you don't need to do it verbatim, but explore these ideas when you're practicing.
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You know, think about staccato versus like legato or slow and fast.
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Like always think about contrast.
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So what we've got so far is just this little, the little scrape, the slide, the pull-up.
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And then I'm just going round robin.
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And a lot of times what I'll do is when I get to this five, I give it a subtle tiny, tiny little bend.
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And it's called a blues bend.
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And what happens is right before you're ready to leave to go to the root, you don't do it early because it'll sound like it's out of town.
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Or out of town, out of tune, okay?
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What you want to do is wait until right before you're ready to leave, right before you're ready to take off, you give it just a little twist, and then you go to wherever you're going, in this case, the root.
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So don't go and hold it because it'll sound out of tune.
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Just stay there, and when you're ready to leave, just wave goodbye by doing a little bit of a twist.
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And I'm just adding all of that together at once.
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And there's no tempo, rhyme, or reason.
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Like I could come to rest on that seven.
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Or not, you see?
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So that's the beginning of this.
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So start with that.
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And the next thing I wanna do is I want to show you the bends that I was talking about, adding some grit to your play.
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So the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna go, again, we're we're playing five and seven right now in this A minor pentatonic.
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What I'm gonna do is move up to nine.
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Now, this is one of my favorite things to do when I need some aggression, okay?
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Is I'm gonna bend this up.
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And hypothetically, it would be like a three-fret bend, but I don't want you to worry about so much about the distance.
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I want you to worry about the execution.
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Just think that you're gonna kind of bend it high, okay?
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And so what I'm doing is I'm bending it kind of over bending.
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I'm bending it high, and then what I'm gonna do is as I bring the bend back down, I'm gonna just direct myself into that seven.
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So you're getting this little dip of a slide getting over to the seven, and again, there's no it it's it's a consequence.
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It's not really anything to worry about.
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I just want you to understand that you don't have to go, you're not making it all nice and pretty.
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You're bending it up, and as you bring it back down, you're heading to that seven.
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Okay, let's see.
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I have heavy strings played with my brother's guitar, who has lighter strings and sounded way better.
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I use pretty light strings as well because of the stuff I'm showing you right now.
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So that's what I'm doing, is I'm bringing it up and then I'm dropping down.
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And when I get there, that's when I immediately go into that lick.
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And you can you can hang that bend out there for a little bit, right?
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It doesn't need to be there for a long time, but you don't have to be scared to hold it for a little bit.
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And you can even establish yourself on the seven before you do the slide.
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You see?
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So it's just, it's, it's trying to get used to understanding you're creating a sound and a feel.
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It's not so much about like the lick has to be perfect, it actually doesn't need to be perfect.
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You're looking for that that aggression.
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That kind of thing.
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And again, no rhyme or reason to the tempo.
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Okay?
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So that's one thing I want you to explore and be okay with it feeling awkward at first.
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Because it's not nice and pretty.
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It's meant to be kind of ugly.
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And I am doing a scrape going into that ninth fret bend.
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I do that a lot because it just sounds more uh Chuck says, hello Steve.
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I run tens on my Les Paul, but they still bend okay.
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And Chuck, they will because a Les Paul generally has a shorter scale, and therefore putting a little bit thicker string on there feels a little bit more comfortable.
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If you have a longer scale, like a 25 and a half, like an Ibanez style, a 24 fret style, it's gonna feel a little more aggressive, a little tighter if you put a set of tens on there because the scale is longer.
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Uh, Steve, when you bend, do you know what you are bending to, or is it just a feel?
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In this case, it's a feel.
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Okay.
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This blues bend, you can hear us how it's just going, uh-uh, right?
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It's not a specific place.
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There are times, obviously, when we bend, where we want to bend to the right note.
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But in what we're talking about today, it really has nothing to do with that.
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It's more of a sound, right?
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More of a feel.
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So that bend right there, what I'm looking for is just that.
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I want it to go up and just be kind of like I'm yelling.
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And then I'm dropping in, I'm dipping into this other.
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Okay, so I'm at five and seven here, if you're watching it uh vertically.
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So it's getting used to, again, sometimes when when you're not used to this sort of thing, it can feel awkward because it's it feels like it's it's out of control.
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And it it takes a while to get used to that.
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It's just something to do, right?
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Think about the very first time you tried to do like a pick slide or something and it felt really stupid and awkward.
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It can feel that way sometimes when you're doing stuff like this until you dial it in.
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So here's the other thing is we can take this same idea and add a couple other bends to it for you to explore.
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So, for instance, and just instead of just using this nine, what I could do is go up to the 12.
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Now, this one's gonna be more of a whole step style bend, but again, I'm not worried about perfection.
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It's more the delivery.
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And I want to get down there, and then if I need to prep myself on that seven for a second before I do the slide to make sure I can execute it properly, that's okay.
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So if I have now the other one that sounds really cool is if you go to 14, and again, more of a whole step style bed.
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And it's that giant kind of Steve Vaiish distance that sounds kind of cool.
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Now, obviously, with all this stuff, you really can't overuse it because it'll sound contrived then.
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You don't want that, okay?
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You just want to add this sometimes when you need a little more aggression.
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And remember, your aggression also comes from your guitar tone, it comes from your approach.
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Like playing more staccato.
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If I if I play very legato, it doesn't sound quite as aggressive.
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When I get into, you know, I can get more aggressive, maybe a wider vibrato.
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You kind of get the idea, right?
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So that's what I'd like you to work on something new for you to to kind of explore a little bit.
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I'm gonna give you a couple more, okay?
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Since I got just a little bit of time on my hands.
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So what we're gonna do here is we're gonna stay in that A minor position, but we're gonna do something new.
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We're gonna go now.
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What I'm doing is I'm going to the six fret, which is actually coming from what we call the diatonic scale.
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But I don't care about the six.
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I'm just using the six as a vehicle to bend to the eight.
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Okay.
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And keep that in mind because I do this a lot with my playing.
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You'll hear a lot of players like Joe Bonamasa will do this.
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Marty Friedman does this a lot, if you know who Marty Friedman is.
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Um, there's a lot of guys, uh uh Eric Johnson does this a lot.
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So the point isn't the six, the point is it's it's a note that's outside the pentatonic that's being bent to a note of the pentatonic.
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Okay, so I'm going coming up, I'm playing seven, five, and that's leading me into this sixth bend.
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Now I'm not done.
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Okay, that sounds fine.
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Going to the eighth sounds great, but this is the cool part, is what I'm gonna do then is after I get done, I'm gonna slide up while this is bent.
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I'm gonna slide up, so I'm letting the slide back down or the bend back down as I slide.
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I'm gonna get to a uh 11 and I'm gonna bend it up, and it's becoming a 13, which again is another note of the scale.
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But that intervalic distance between this bend and this bend is what makes it sound kind of gritty, kind of cool, kind of different.
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Okay, so again, the 11 isn't necessarily the note that we're looking for in a scale, it's a vehicle for the bend.
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Okay, and it's really cool when you start thinking about that because you can go to a lot of notes that are outside the lines and bend it to something that you want.
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So here's another example.
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If I went up here into this A minor pentatonic box right here, so 12, I'm playing 12, 15 on the on the uh fifth string.
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And then I'm playing 12, 14, 12, 14, 13, 15, 12, 15.
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Some of you know that, okay?
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And it's okay if you don't, but that that's what the pentatonic would be.
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Now, instead of playing that, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go to this 14 and bend to the 15.
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Now I could bend that 14 to the 15 and then move on.
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So what happens is I'm just doing this bend and then and then moving off somewhere else.
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So if you think about it, I'm kind of isolating it, I'm doing the bend, and when I get done, I'm giving it just a tiny little space of of air before I start the next note.
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That way, kind of sounds like BB King stuff.
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So the first note is out of tune, so to speak, because it's not part of the scale, but it bends to the note that you want.
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Thank you, Ryan.
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That's really nice of you to say, man.
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And then you go wherever you want.
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Now, here's another thing I could do.
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I could bend that 14 up and then go to the 15 and bend that up like I normally would.
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You know, I could do something like that.
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It doesn't matter.
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You can do whatever you want.
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I could play.
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Now it's gonna sound chromatic.
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Now I'm playing this, again, this is my A on the 14th fret, and then I'm going to 13, which is pentatonic.
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14 does not make sense.
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But if I play it and then do a half step bend, it sounds kind of cool.
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Let me show you my uh my terrible rendition of what I use my Marty Friedman influence on, which I do this a lot.
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So if I go to the A on the 14th fret of the third string of this pentatonic shape right here.
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Okay, so I can do whatever right there.
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So now what I can do is I could go to the 13 in front of it and bend that 13 up to the 14.
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So I play the 14 and then I reiterate that sound, which is an A, by playing the 13 and bending it.
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Now again, a great thing to do is when you come out of that band, don't bring it back down.
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What you'll notice about these bands that I'm doing, these out-of-tune bands, is I'm not really bringing them back down.
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I'm just leaving.
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You see?
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So they take some time.
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It takes some practice because it's unusual.
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Chuck, uh, let's see here.
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Who do I have?
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Eddie says, so these bends sound experimental to me.
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Will there be times when it does not sound right?
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Yes.
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And and and remember, Eddie, it's the delivery of the way that you're doing it, right?
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And it's got to be part of your style.
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Like for me, I like wide intervals and I like this aggressive sort of stuff.
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It fits what I enjoy doing.
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So if I go for a band, that that feels comfortable to me to play that way.
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Um, but I'll tell you, what's interesting is when I was a kid and I was learning how to play, for whatever reason, as we are as humans, I used to think of scales as right or wrong.
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You were either in the right scale or you weren't.
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And if you if that note didn't fit, you weren't allowed by the guitar gods, you weren't allowed to play that note because it wasn't part of the scale.
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And so I was very diligent that way.
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And there are times when that's very important, right?
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I mean, it depends on the style of music, it depends on the the musical situation you're in.
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And you you want to be more accurate to what's happening with the music.
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This is more of a rock, blues, hard rock, you know, harder blues kind of situation that you could do this in.
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There are other situations too, but you have to be you have to be smart about this.
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So when I was a kid, I never did anything that was outside the lines.
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I never colored outside the lines.
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I did exactly what I was supposed to do.
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When I started learning more about this and learning that the lines a lot of times are very blurred, there's a lot of different things that you can do depending on your delivery and what feels comfortable to you.
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And again, the situation.
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You could do a pinch harmonic, Ryan, anytime.
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You know, again, you can do whatever you want anytime you want.
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That's the fun of this.
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Chuck says, these bending progressions you are teaching us are working on my Gibson Les Paul.
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That's great.
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Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, is it it doesn't matter what you're doing it on.
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It's just understand that we've talked about a few different things today.
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Don't feel like you have to do it all.
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And don't try and do it all fast.
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The goal is to absorb something and really make it authentic.
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When you go to deliver it, you feel good.
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With that, that again, the approach that you're using.
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If you have to plant yourself for a second on that seven to get ready for the little slide, don't be in a hurry.
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It's okay.
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You can and then dip into the slide afterwards, right?
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Or maybe that's the only thing you walk away with, but that's okay.
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Just get used to seeing it, understanding it, how it's working, how it doesn't fit, but still functions.
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That way, when you get done with the lick, you can always drop into something that does make sense to you, you see, and then continue on your way.
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So, anyway, you guys all have a great uh weekend and um stay positive, keep practicing.
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And again, if you're ever looking for bumping up your game on a serious level, head over to Guitar Zoom, check out the Guitar Zoom Academy.
00:19:40.949 --> 00:19:46.069
You and I can talk to each other and talk about what it is, how it works, see if it fits you, and all that kind of stuff.
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All right.
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So God bless, take care, everybody, and uh, we'll talk to you soon, okay?
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Bye, everybody.