String bending Definition: String bending is a guitar performance technique. It is usually represented by "B" in guitar tablature.

The push and release method is an indispensable technique in modern metal string guitar playing. It originated from blues and is a very important iconic technique in blues music performance.

Although you can see a variety of push and play methods in today's electric guitar performances, you must know that early blues only used a push and play method close to a semitone. Playing method. With the development of blues music, and later influenced by Hawaiian guitar music, full tone push (Full) was also widely used in traditional blues music. In modern rock and blues, you can sometimes see minor thirds and even major thirds pushed (on electric guitars). It can be said that as long as your strings don't break, you can push it any way you want. However, if you want to master authentic blues music, you need to have some understanding of the origins and application theories of blues pushing and playing techniques.

Although early blues was based on the pentatonic minor scale, in New Orleans, many black blues guitarists also like to use a "blues sound" that is considered "the most exciting". It is the b5 level that comes from Congolese folk music and was later added to the blues scale. However, because the pitch of this note is slightly different from the corresponding pitch level in the traditional European scale (it is about 1/4 semitone lower). Therefore, early black blues guitarists often used push playing techniques close to half a step on the previous level to achieve what they felt was a special pitch level. This gave rise to the push and play method. . Later, in order to make the melody they played more harmonious with the accompaniment chords, the solution from b3 to 3 tone level, and b7 to 7 tone level was produced. In this way, while resolving the harmonic conflict, it also made the melody have some Major colors. Many black people also like to use the pushing technique to achieve these two solutions (the playing method is rarely used in these two levels). Although these two notes can theoretically be pushed to a full semitone, many people still prefer to push them to 3/4 semitones. Seeing the special effects produced by this pushing method, many white guitarists began to imitate it. But it's often easy to push it a full semitone at first. In fact, today, the actual pitch of the 1/2 fader commonly used by most blues guitarists is generally slightly lower than a standard semitone (about 3/4 of a semitone), and, on an authentic box guitar In blues music, you can only hear this slightly insufficient push application of two intervals, 1/2 push and whole tone push (major second). On the one hand, this is probably due to the traditional listening habits of blues music; on the other hand, it may also be because it is not easy to play higher intervals on an acoustic guitar. In short, understanding this knowledge will be of great significance for you to understand and master the more authentic box piano blues.

You can use any finger except your thumb to bend the strings. The key points are as follows:

1. The correct bending action exerts force on the wrist, not the fingers. So learn to use the power of your wrist, not just your fingers. This not only saves effort, but also makes it easier to control the bending sound.

2. During the string bending process, the joints of the string bending fingers should be kept at a relatively fixed curvature (stretched) as much as possible, so as to improve the efficiency of the wrist movements. It may feel unnatural at first, but once you get used to it it will get better.

3. In order to make the string bending action easier, other fingers in front of the main bending finger can assist in bending the strings at the back (except when the index finger bends the strings).

4. Pay attention to the fact that the movement of the hand when bending the strings is the movement of the base of a triangle with the G point in contact with the outside of the index finger and the neck in the illustration as the center of a circle. Whenever you bend a string with any finger, the outside of your index finger can be used as a fulcrum against the side of the neck.

Remember, your main string bending finger is like a stick with a relatively fixed curvature, and the power of string bending comes from the axial swing of the wrist. Mastering the pushing and playing techniques will lay a good foundation for the vibrato technique you will learn later.