I've been working on this for a good 4 or 5 years now. I've watched every youtube video I could find, read every thread I could search up (including a good 3 or 4 from TFB), and I STILL just can't get this to happen in a musical way.
I've tried adjusting my grip, pivot angle, thumb position, even which leg my guitar rests on. Most recently, I put 8's on my Strat to see if that helped. I've tried different guitars. No cigar.
What I end up doing is essentially shaking the entire guitar neck, to get minimal vibrato without much co-ordination. When I watch people, even relatively novice, who can do it, they seem to be able to isolate the neck whilst the strings are able move freely - I can't seem to decouple the two.
Further to this, I'm very comfortable with bending and vibrato in their own right, and my hand strength isn't an issue. It really is down to technique.
I find the biggest issue with a lot of the advice and video instruction is that it clearly comes more naturally to the people, and hence they often describe it in such a way. At this stage all I can do is the basic starting exercise of bending up a whole step, then oscillating the string VERY slowly flat of that note and then back again (i.e. letting the string tension do the work - as they say). It's not musical at all, and almost sounds like several discrete bends in sequence, rather than one continuous vibrato. Whenever I try to speed up, or give it more feeling, I end up just shaking the whole guitar neck.
I almost feel as though I wan't to reach down with my right hand and anchor the neck in place, if that gives any hint as to the cause of my problem.
Has anyone else here overcome this struggle that could offer advice towards what that helped overcome it?
In my entire life, I've genuinely never felt so defeated!
Comments
This is where I've been stuck for years now, looking to move past that point.
I appreciate this is weird, because it seems I have the basic mechanics of it, just falls apart when I try to implement it into something musical.
Another thought. I find it easier with higher frets.
If the neck is moving up and down a lot, I wonder whether you're applying too much pressure towards the fretboard and (in effect) grabbing the neck too much. The neck sometimes moves up and down a bit when I vibrato, but you don't want it to be so much that it cancels out the string bend and release.
I put my thumb behind the neck and use at least 2 fingers, sometimes 3 to all push together on the note. Then bend up slowish to pitch then drop and back up smoothly .... the vibrato comes from squeezing the distance between my fingers and my thumb rather than rotate my hand .... like squeezing a ball in your hand
- Thumb stays in contact with the back of the neck
- Bend is supported by as many fingers as you can afford
- Let the bend breathe before you add the vibrato
- Make the vibrato's rhythm musical, i.e. relevant to the tempo in some way
- Don't overbend the vibrato and go sharp (yuk!)
There's a lot of help here already...can you post a vid?As Danny1969 mentioned, always support your bends with whatever fingers are behind the one doing the bending (obviously if bending up with first finger you can't!). This helps greatly with the control.
Other than that, don't overthink it(!). I think changing string gauges etc.. is a distraction here.
Good luck!
What I would like to find is a video where someone just plays a bend with vibrato that I can just loop continuously and try to replicate. Most vids I have seen are endless talk and other stuff. A dead simple video!
I like a wide vibrato though.
It "clicked" for me when I started looking at it that way. Ymmv.
Not me (and I realise everyone has their own way of doing things!).
My thumb is bent round the top of the neck Hendrix style at the first joint allowing me to move left hand fingers up for the bend and thumb pressure down on the top of the neck - which allows complete control of the note. It's almost like a squeezing motion.
(Obviously at the dusty end my thumb has to slip down a little).
Here's the master at work and you see what I mean when he bends notes...