The Best Guitar Bending Lesson EVER

[Music] hi everyone my name is ayla tesler muabe and today i want to show you the best guitar bending exercise ever before we get into the exercise i want to quickly talk about you know how to bend and what exactly it is in case you don't already know so essentially on the guitar we can play frets for example i could play something like that i just played three notes in a row however i can also bend the string upwards in order to get to those notes instead of just playing them separately for example [Music] i achieved these notes by actually taking the string planting my fingers on there and pushing the string up now occasionally you do pull the string down in this direction instead but that's only the case on the lower strings on the higher strings if you were to try that sounds terrible because i just dragged the string right off the fretboard so just try it out maybe start with whatever you find most comfortable though for most people that's bending up and go from there and quick tip i always like to bend with my third finger on the fret that i'm bending and then you can put your other fingers behind it for support because it can be pretty hard to have enough strength and power to bend with just one finger so use your other fingers to make it easier so again let me just show you that whole process in depth so i want to bend the 15th fret of the b string so i'm going to take my third finger put it on that fret i'm going to put my middle finger behind it for support and if you even want to make things even easier put your first finger on for support it's up to you and then usually people put their thumb over the neck like this because that helps you stabilize the neck that's a great thing to do and then you push the string up [Music] like that very quickly i want to talk about two types of bends the first being one where you start with the note completely neutral the string is not bent at all and then you push the note up so again you see the string is completely neutral and then i bend now the second type of bend is one where the string is already bent this is commonly referred to as a pre-bend where let's say i'm trying to bend to that note i'm actually going to bend to that note before i even strike the string and this takes a lot of ear training like the note i just played there was a little flat so that would tell me i have to [Music] try to put a little more pressure to get a little higher i could even over bend like let's say i'm trying to bend here it sounds a little sharp so it just takes some muscle memory to get there you could even consider getting a head stock tuner putting it right here so you can watch yourself as you're playing and that might be a great way to build your ear and your muscle memory and i actually would highly recommend doing that if you are new to bending i think you'll get a lot out of that so once you find the note pre-bent you just bring the note down like that so again this is where i start with the string completely neutral and then bend up to that note sometimes you stop the note before you hear it come back down like this sometimes you hear it come up and down like this [Music] or like the pre-bending technique i just spoke about sometimes you start with the note already bent where you want it to be and then you release it [Music] so before we get to the exercise i want to quickly touch on a few more points firstly the ease of bending that you have on your instrument definitely depends on what exact guitar you're using so bending on acoustic guitar is typically way more difficult than bending on electric and a lot of that has to do with the tension of the strings and this is also relevant to just electric guitar for example i have a short scale guitar back there the duo sonic where because the neck is shorter it's a lot easier to bend because there's a lot less tension whereas this guitar here is a standard length electric guitar and will have a little bit more tension a lot of this also depends on the string gauge or in other words the thickness of the strings for example i'm using tens right now but i'd have a much more difficult time bending if i was using 13s let's say like stevie ray vaughn or i'd have an even easier time bending if i were using nines or eights or sevens or whatever so it's just about finding what works for you and one last note i want to give typically when people bend they keep their fingers curved and then they bend the string up however for me just because my fingers naturally do this i've found that i have the most control when i kind of hyper flex slightly at this distal inter-phalangeal joint i've had this checked out by many doctors and they're not concerned because that's just what my hands fingers naturally do but in general for most people you want to keep it like this and you'll probably find that's how you have the most control but again this is the ayla method and i'm just different like that you do you all right let's get to that exercise i've been talking about this whole time it actually has three parts to it let's start on part one this is all about finding your reference note and building muscle memory so that you can bend to exactly the note you're looking for and this again is also a great year training exercise so let's say we're up here at the 15th fret of the b string because why not we're already here what i'm gonna try to do is bend this note to this note here on the 16th fret so like i just did i'm going to play my original note my target note and i'm going to try to bend to that note and then if i had a tuner i'd be able to see with even more accuracy if i was getting it right on the money where i wanted it to be and once you feel comfortable with that we'll move up to two frets [Music] and you can approach this two ways you can either keep the notes slurred that might be good while you're still bending pardon me still building you're bending muscle memory because you'll be able to hear if you're too flat or sharp and you'll be able to make adjustments but ideally you get to a point where you can just bend right to the note and you'll be able to hear them all separately and articulate like that because that's the best test of muscle memory but overall i think being able to do both is great because you'll be able to turn those into licks down the road we'll talk about that at the very end but to keep going let's say you're feeling good about two frets let's try three so we're bending to three frets above that original that seemed okay to me and then once you're comfortable with that you could even keep going and i think that's a good place to stop aiming for four frets above is pretty solid i'd say again it depends on the guitar you have you might find that you're still new to this there's a lot of tension on the guitar maybe you won't be able to get four frets no worries conversely you might find that four frets is super easy because your guitar just allows you to do that or you're just super awesome at bending either way great to work on it and again try this separately where you're separating each of the notes that was too flat [Music] or you can slur them and then when you're comfortable with that let's move on to step two of this example this is gonna require even more muscle memory because we're gonna be descending so what i mean by that is let's start kind of the same as before we'll start with just one fret [Music] but what i did there was i actually started with the top note and then came down to that 15th fret and then now let's try from two frets up [Music] three frets up four frets up [Music] so again it's all about muscle memory can you get to the right pitches without even hearing them all right number three is to combine what we've looked at so far with ascending and descending because this is kind of the ultimate way to put it all together so what we can do is play our reference pitches that's what we're going to try to emulate now let's try with three frets above [Music] that's what we're gonna try to play and once you get once you get comfortable with that try four frets above [Music] let's try again i need to work on that more [Music] and after bending for a while you might find that you want to play the practice pitches again the reference pitches uh just because again this is all about training your ear [Music] that's pretty solid i like that and again the magic of this once you're starting to get the feel for all of this even if it's just one fret [Music] or two frets this can turn into a really tasteful lick for your playing cause instead of playing those chromatic notes one by one you can turn it into something like this [Music] you can either pick them like we've been doing for the practice exercise or you can stop picking altogether [Music] and that can turn into a really expressive lick for your playing let me kick on some overdrive and just give you an example of what that could sound like [Music] let me play some classic rock licks and then throw in some chromatic bending licks like we've been practicing and see what that sounds like [Music] me [Music] okay i like that sound of that stuff that's the ayla sound everyone makes fun of like if you want to mock my playing it's always so again not only did i show you an exercise that'll help you build muscle memory train your ear all that good stuff but like we saw at the end it can actually become lick it can become lick it can become a lick that you throw into your playing that can give here playing a really evocative vocal like quality to it i point to people like tomo fujita as an example of someone who uses this all the time in his playing he's someone who's inspired me so much i think you should check them out if you like the style of playing and i hope you learned a little something today i hope you enjoy practicing your guitar and please leave a comment down below of what your favorite lick that has a sweet band in it is i think the community would love to know and i hope you have a wonderful day [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Musora

Views: 82,671

Keywords: ascending bend, ayla tesler-mabe, beginner guitar lesson, beginner lead guitar, bending, bending exercise, bending notes, bending strings, chromatic licks, descending bend, electric bend, full bend, guitar bending, guitar exercise, guitar lead, guitar lesson, guitar melody, guitar playing, guitar riffs, guitar slurring, guitar solo, guitareo, half bend, how to bend, how to bend notes, lead guitar, lead guitar lesson, note bending, pitch bending, riffs, string bending

Id: nhvnEIUpO-M

Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021