Blues and Rock string bending tips

[VKat]

I have shorter than normal guitar fingers for preferred string bending method with the thumb over the neck. In fact in any style I can only play with my thumb behind the neck.

Do you guys with shorter fingers find it acceptible to execute string bends with the thumb just shifted up behind the neck but not hanging over the fretboard? Whenever I see people bending strings their thumb is touching the fretboard and if try to do that I find it impossible to fret any notes with my fingers.

General advice for string bending is to hang the thumb over the neck for providing good leverage and I agree that's very efficient. I wonder how people with short fingers get around their limitations.

[Flyin' Brian]

I don't have short fingers, but I leave my thumb in the middle of the back of the neck all of the time, bending or not. It just takes practice and time to build up the strength in your fingers so you don't need the thumb to help out.

A good practice aid is to start playing as few scales with your thumb completely off of the neck, then gradually start adding a bent note here and there.

[Shadow of the Sun]

Generally, when I'm bending, I will simply let go of the neck apart from my fingertips and just use my hand strength.

I honestly just find that more comfortable than trying to use my thumb over the neck. I'll sometimes do that, and sometimes use my thumb right in the back, classical style, but quite often when I'm playing I'm not using my thumb at all, probably because I use an exaggerated violin style vibrato where having a very mobile arm is a good thing.

Editting this in, but I think I don't use my thumb on the neck much at all because when I was learning, I tried to use my hand strength to get barre chords. Eventually, I learned that that didn't work and now rely on my back muscles instead- so I can more or less let the thumb go off and do what it wants because I don't really use it much at all. I could still play with my left thumb cut off.

[Turtlejimmy]

Depends on what sort of a guitar you're trying to bend, and what size the intended bended strings are.

If it's a Strat and the string size is .009, do it any way you want, they almost bend themselves.

However, on something a lot harder, like an acoustic steel string, with heavier strings (like .011), I grab the back of the neck with my thumb and, with at least 2 finges, push like ****.


Turtle

[Flyin' Brian]

Originally Posted by Turtlejimmy

Depends on what sort of a guitar you're trying to bend, and what size the intended bended strings are.

If it's a Strat and the string size is .009, do it any way you want, they almost bend themselves.

However, on something a lot harder, like an acoustic steel string, with heavier strings (like .011), I grab the back of the neck with my thumb and, with at least 2 fingers, push like ****.


Turtle

It certainly depends on the strings and the scale length and the player. Larry Carlton is one of the kings not just of bending, but bending in tune. He uses 10s on his 335 but has 12s on his acoustic and he slides instead of bending on the acoustic. On the other hand I have a friend who plays jump blues on a wonderful old 1953 ES-175. He uses 13s and bends whole tones perfectly all the time.

[cosmic gumbo]

Holdsworth doesn't let his wimpy hand strength stop him from bending, he just slaps on some .008.

[Turtlejimmy]

Some guitars just don't like to have their strings being bent, no matter what the guage. My Gibson SG is like this. I think that thinner strings help a lot, but so does a long scale. I'm just surprised that, being so thin, the Fender super bullets strings stay in tune. Maybe they pre-stretch them or something.


Turtle

[ES350]

Back up the finger doing the bend with at least one other finger---a bit more strength that way. Set-up helps a lot too; a little higher action lets the finger get under and push.

[NSJ]

Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo

Holdsworth doesn't let his wimpy hand strength stop him from bending, he just slaps on some .008.

Wow. Is this true? No wonder his tone blows chunks.