MELODIC MUSE by Andy Timmons
THE BENDS, PART 4
String bending offers us guitarists a highly effective way to evoke a wide range of sounds and emotions from our instrument and emulate some of the qualities of the human voice, such as adding vibrato to a note, or seamlessly sliding, or gliding, from one pitch up or down to another, what is known as glissando. All of our favorite players use bending as an essential expressive tool when soloing. In this fourth installment examining this highly effective and useful technique, Andy Timmons plays through a 24-bar minor blues progression in the key of C# minor, touching on many different approaches to string bending.
THE BENDS, PART 4
String bending offers us guitarists a highly effective way to evoke a wide range of sounds and emotions from our instrument and emulate some of the qualities of the human voice, such as adding vibrato to a note, or seamlessly sliding, or gliding, from one pitch up or down to another, what is known as glissando. All of our favorite players use bending as an essential expressive tool when soloing. In this fourth installment examining this highly effective and useful technique, Andy Timmons plays through a 24-bar minor blues progression in the key of C# minor, touching on many different approaches to string bending.
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MusicTranscript
00:00everybody welcome back andy timmons here melodic muse for guitar world and we're going to carry
00:23on with some c-sharp minor blues uh for those of you curious this track that i'm playing to
00:27is actually from my in the jam course that i did for true fire a while back uh really great uh
00:32sounding bunch of tracks that you can jam on with me on if you're curious to check that out please
00:36do but let's dig back in we're gonna uh turn on a bit more gain and play uh some blues here
00:57so
01:07guitar solo
01:37Starting the solo, I'm building up, just kind of building up to the pentatonic, but as soon as I choose a bend, it's clear that I'm thinking of tension.
01:56You know, it's on a C sharp minor nine, but I decide to bend from the third to the fourth.
02:07Because that wants to go somewhere, it needs to resolve.
02:21So I would have been up to it.
02:24Maybe beyond it.
02:26It's a major third.
02:27So that might be a little difficult for some to get all the way up to that pitch, but try.
02:38There, I'm just barely touching on it, but I'm very accurate with the pitch.
02:41There, I'm just going to push.
02:56Continuing on, I bend up to the scale like we worked on earlier.
02:59I made use of that C sharp minor Dorian.
03:02It's a nice way of kind of just building a little bit and playing some melodies.
03:16And then I switched to the B string, not only on the G string.
03:18At the end, I had to pull out one of my favorite bend licks from my buddy, Steve Lukather, end
03:32of Rosanna, that really wide interval.
03:38But now, of course, that Rosanna's in G, this is C sharp.
03:41But I'm on the B string, bending from the E to G sharp.
03:48You know, probably coming from Albert King at some point, or Hendrix.
03:56But it's done in a shrub D4.
04:03Then I do the same bend from the B to the, yeah, what is it, B to D sharp.
04:10So, first on the B string, E to G sharp.
04:15And then...
04:18So, as you can see, there's so much potential with bending to add to your melodies.
04:32You know, I've hopefully given you lots of ideas of how to kind of bend through the chord
04:36changes, how to, you know, apply tension and release from bending to certain notes, releasing
04:42to certain notes.
04:43So, please, you know, hopefully you're inspired by this, keep playing, keep working at this
04:49bending, and I'm going to do the same thing.
04:50And we'll see you next time.