Uncommon / unusual techniques to add emotion & expressiveness in ballads.

**brent.h** · 05-02-2026, 11:03 AM

Besides dynamics, slides, slurs, bends, vibratos, what lesser known or unusual technique do you use to hit audiences in the feels during ballads?

Was listening to some Prez + Billie earlier and I was wondering about a few things and trying them out:

- playing in the lower register more often (say, frets 1 to 5, bottom 4 strings - EADG) like a tenor sax

- holding down a chord (preferably a low drop 2 chord or guide tones for example) and playing each note individually, and letting them ring throughout the bar or 2 bars

- using my tremolo bar to vibrate them ringing notes simultaneously

- repeating a note across multiple bars and allowing each new chord to shape that note so that it sounds the same but it's different

What in your experience have you done that was satisfying to you and your listeners?

**Alter** · 05-02-2026, 12:07 PM

I transcribe vocalists. You are trying to match the voice, which you can only approximate, so you're bound to use everything there is on the guitar. I think it has helped me a lot.

I also have the body be in tune with the song. Movement and breathing tend to match the phrasing.

**brent.h** · 05-02-2026, 12:16 PM

What about long tones? How effective is using that tremolo technique that banjoists have in their tool box for long tones on guitar?

**rpjazzguitar** · 05-02-2026, 01:22 PM

The techniques I use include:

vibrato of various types

bending notes

reharmonization

moving voices

use of open strings

attention to the exact timbre of the notes

balance between sound and silence

just playing a bass line, or some simple single note line if there is a bassist

careful changes of octave

rubato vs time

**pauln** · 05-03-2026, 11:50 AM

I classify these things for simplicity into two basic categories:

Guitaristic
This means things that the guitar can do mechanically fairly naturally. I'll just mention some things with harmonics.

-- harmonics that form a chord

-- harmonics that form a line

-- harmonic of any pitch on the guitar (in the same way that the harmonic on the 6th string fifth fret forces three nodes that divide the string into four sounding sections producing a pitch two octaves above the open low E, fingering any fretted string and touching up a fourth will produce a harmonic two octaves above the fretted pitch). The finger you use to touch the string for the harmonic is from your right hand. This is the technique (shifting picking position to simultaneously touch the string with a back finger of the same hand) you hear every once in a while where lines or arpeggio'd chords are sounded like music box chimes.

-- forced harmonics for chords (typically produced by holding the fingering for a chord and using either your right hand index of pinky to slap the strings 12 frets above - approximate is OK but if you really learn to do it you learn how to angle your finger kind of like a lap steel player angles the bar to mimic the general fingering shape of the chord). Slapping other distance up will produce different harmonics.

- gongs and bells - if you want to play the sound of a gong, large tubular bell, or large church bell, push or pull to bend one of the wound strings OVER its lower neighbor string (like the D string crossing over the A string around the 5th fret or vice versa) so they cross and hold down firm and steady, then pick either of those strings. If you want the sound of the bell like you hear at a railroad crossing, cross two of the plain strings up around the 12th fret. In all cases, the strings must be crossed and both fretted firmly behind the crossing.
Warning! Do not drive or operate heavy equipment after indulging in gongs and bells. All these crossed string sounds heavily feature a stack of non-harmonically related random sounding dissonant harmonics... bending these things or diving a trem bar is potentially psychoactive, more so if over driven to produce greater harmonic density, even much more so if using long delay or deep reverb.

Other instrumentistic
This means things that the guitarist can do technically with acquired skill, so I won't describe how these are done; it takes a lot of listening and experimentation. These are all breath instruments, so the majority of convincing imitation is in the phrasing.

-- clarinet
This is the easiest; use the neck pickup, play firmly, do not go below the 12th fret (stay in the clarinet's range), the shorter sounding string lengths help mimic the "hollow" tone. The clarinet is so facile that just about anything you play won't sound impossible.

-- trumpet
Not so hard; everyone has heard a lot of trumpet and knows the tone and familiar cliches (triplets and embellishments). Use the bridge pickup and hold the pick flat for clear attack.

-- flute
Difficult, the flute in Jazz tends to play "flutterly" what sounds like breathy large interval grace notes (hard to describe) fairly hard to do on guitar in a way that sounds flutely, takes some time to approach it.

-- sax
Can't do this unless you use a pedal - an overdrive that produces a particularly fat, rich, gutsy, juicy, squeaky sounding tone. Although the sax is also a very facile instrument, in Jazz and most other forms its actual manifest playing is rather stylistic. There are characteristic short lines that must be included with fingerings that mimic the phrasing, with plenty of space compared to usual guitar lines. Don't use reverb for sax.