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Home > Lead Guitar Lessons > String Bends on Guitar

Guitar String Bending - The Basics

As a lead guitarist, string bending is an essential technique you need to pick up. Using bends adds colour to your solos, and actually gives you a lot more physical freedom when playing scales.

I'm sure you know the basic principle behind bending (you...uh...bend the string), but this lesson will show you how to execute it with ease.

Note: When using an acoustic guitar for soloing, you'll find the strings have way more tension in them, so bending will be slightly more difficult. I'll show you some finger exercises later on to help this.

String bending with ease on the guitar neck

The mistake a lot of guitarists make is to only use one finger to bend. You'd think that makes sense, right? The idea is to get as much finger power behind the string as possible - think of it like lifting furniture - when there are 3 people, the job gets done much easier. Same with bending - use 3 fingers to bend the string more easily...

Click the pic to see a video example (WMV format)

guitar string bending example using three fingers

So whatever fret you're on, and you know you're going to bend at that fret, use your ring finger to fret the string and place your middle and index fingers behind to support it. You'll find this makes bending physically easier.

Now, obviously to use this technique, you'll have to know how to use your scales to actually get in the position where your ring finger lands on the fret you're bending at. We'll look at this another lesson - one step at a time!

You're fingers may be strong enough as they are to bend without the aid of 2 other fingers - the above method just makes bending less of a strain - especially on acoustic guitar.

Degrees of string bending

When you bend, you're essentially raising the pitch of the note being played, and you need accuracy with your fingers and with your ears to bend into the pitch you want. The "new" pitch after the bend is, in most cases, gonna be part of the scale/key you're in for that particular song. That's where your judgement and knowledge of scales comes in (yep, another lesson!)

OK, let's look at bending half a step, which is the equivalent of moving up one fret.

First, fret any string at any fret (for this example we'll use the G string at fret 7, which is the note D)

Second, find the tone you want to bend to as it would be on the fretboard so you've got a guide for your ears - this is important at first when training your ears. We said we'd be bending a half step, so the pitch we're bending to is the equivalent of one fret up from the original note.

Finally, try bending to that new pitch from the original note...

Click the diagrams in this lesson to hear examples

Like in the example above, try different bending speeds. Sometimes you'll want a slow, lazy bend, other times you might want a quick knee jerk bend (especially if following it with a pull off - more on this another time!).

You'll probably notice with a half step bend we don't actually have to bend the string that much

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Now let's try a slightly larger bend - a whole step bend, which is the equivalent of moving up two frets

Follow the same procedure as before, but this time find the new pitch a whole step up from our original note.

It's rare that a guitarist would bend a string beyond a whole step, but have a try with further degrees if you like and give your fingers a workout.

Guitar string bending - bending the top two strings

You'll have probably realised by now that when bending in the direction towards the floor (pulling the string), the B and high E strings are restricted by the edge of the fretboard - if you bend the B string more than half a step, in slips off the edge, and the high E string probably can't even make half a step bend.

Simple - just bend up, pushing the string upwards. Still make sure you're supporting that ring finger with the other two fingers. Don't curl your thumb round like I've done below - it's just so I could get the angle right for the shot!

Let's try bending the high E string at fret 12. Try bending it a whole step (remember - that's the equivalent of moving up two frets) by pushing the string upwards...

string bending high E string up a whole step

And finally the B string at the same fret, using the same upwards motion...

You'll find that as you bend, especially if your guitar has a thin neck, you'll come into contact with the other strings - simply go with the flow as if you're pushing them out the way as you bend, but without fretting them (unless it sounds good of course!)

Other simple string bending exercises

Try the following exercise which includes 2 bends within the same lick...

two guitar string bends in the same lick

Hear clean example - Hear distorted example

And of course, you can bend two strings at a time - I use my middle and ring fingers to do this...

Hear clean example - Hear distorted example

Things to note about string bending

When bending you might notice your strings go out of tune easily. This is most likely because they haven't had such tensions applied till now. In fact, bending is a great way to "settle" new strings in by stretching them out.
The lighter your string gauge, the easier it'll be to bend. So with acoustic guitars the strings are naturally heavier gauge which means more tension and more physical attack needed for bending.
If you bend and hold the new pitch for more than a second and the note dies, apply another pick stroke and keep doing so until you move on from that note. This is necessary for non-distorted solos where bends are held for a while.
Do you know any scales? It's funny, a lot of guitarists get used to bending using minor pentatonic because of the bluesy roots of it, but try bending in different scales and modes (there are backing track lessons for scales being built on the lead guitar lessons page).

Well, that's our introduction to guitar string bending... something new to play with when soloing.

In part 2, we'll look at identifying and using bends in scale within a solo. We'll also have some backing tracks to experiment over!

Of course, string bending can sound far more interesting when used with other techniques which I'll cover in the lead guitar section.

For now, thanks for your time and keep learning!

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