 Hello everyone, welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and I'm here with MGRmusic.com and today we're going to learn three essential blues techniques. For this video I've got my Shergold Masquerader SM03 plugged into the Silverline Deluxe. The amp is mic'd with an Aston Origin Condenser microphone. If you're just getting started with your lead guitar journey and you're starting to build some blues based licks, you're going to want to learn some techniques to help embellish those licks a little further. In this video we're going to learn three of those techniques. The first thing we're going to look at is string bending. String bending is a technique that requires precision and finger strength. You're going to give your fingers a workout if you've never done this technique before. It's also going to help your listening skills to help you recognize pitch by listening to it. So we're going to look at three main types of string bending. The first one we're going to look at is called a full tone or a full step bend. This is when you play a note and you bend that string up the equivalent of a two fret distance. So we're going to use the seventh fret of the G for this and we're going to bend this note. So to start off with the technique let's put our third finger on that note. Now I'm not going to do the string bend with the one finger because I just don't have enough strength. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to use the other two fingers and I'm going to place them down on the string behind. So I've now got three fingers spread out across the G. This means the string tension is now spread out evenly across three different fingers instead of one fingertip. This actually makes the string bend much easier to achieve. Try that yourself. Try and bend a string with one finger and then add the other two in and see the difference that makes. It really does spread the tension of the string out a lot more evenly and your fingers won't burn out as fast. Like I said this is going to test your finger strength if you haven't spent much time doing string bending before you're really going to start working on those calluses. Next up we need to train our hearing. So for a full tone bend we've got to listen to the note that's two frets higher. So if I'm going to be bending the seventh fret on the G up a full tone that means it's going to hit the pitch of the ninth. So I'm going to play this note here on the ninth fret of the G and I'm just going to listen to that pitch. I'm going to get that pitch in my head and then I come back to the seventh fret and I'm going to play this and I'm going to push the string up until the pitch that I recognise as being this pitch is matched here. So that was a little sharp. So if I do this I can hear that's actually a little flat. So play the note that you're aiming for. First of all this is a great way to build your hearing skills. You're going to give yourself that reference point and then you're going to bend the string that's two frets lower up until the pitch matches. It may take a little bit of practice but don't worry your fingers will soon get used to it and you'll also start to develop that string distance into your muscle memory and the string bending will become a lot more natural. The next thing we're going to look at is called a half step or a half tone bend. Now obviously a full tone is two frets. A half tone as you can imagine is only one fret. So it's exactly the same principle but this time our reference note is here on the eighth fret of the G. So I'm only actually bending that note now up an equivalent of one fret. And the final bend and this is used a lot in blues is what's called a quarter tone. Now we've got a full tone which is two frets and a half tone which is one fret. Now a quarter tone may seem like a strange idea because the guitar frets actually go up in semitones. So we're actually targeting a note here that is actually between two different frets. So this is actually a string bend that you can't really pitch with a reference. It's more of a feel thing. So in blues music this is typically used on the back finger. So our first finger for instance if I was playing a scale, that little flick there I did. I'm actually bending that note. It's going up in pitch but it's not coming up as far as this note. Somewhere in between. Those quarter tone bends are used a lot just to add a vocal embellishment at the end of a blues lick. So here is a lick that uses all three types of string bends that we've learned. So this lick is basically just broken down into a couple of different little bending phrases. The first phrase is a full tone bend on the seventh fret of the G. And then I'm playing the fifth on the B and E. I'm playing this twice as a series of triplets. One and a two and a. On the third beat I'm hitting a semitone bend here on the seventh fret of the G. Just bend that up to the eighth fret. On the end of three I'm playing the fifth fret with one of those quarter tone bends. So I'm going. And then on the fourth beat, land on the seventh fret of the D string. So here's that nice and slow. The second technique we're going to learn is vibrato. Vibrato is a great way to add expressiveness to your blues playing. Vibrato is when you actually wobble the pitch of the note you're playing up and down. This gives it a very vocal feel. Many singers will apply a lot of vibrato when they're holding a note. The same is true of the guitar. Many iconic guitar players have their own signature vibrato style. And this is one of the things that gives their playing its unique characteristics. To get your vibrato super tight, pick a note. It doesn't matter which one. We'll do the fifth fret on the G here to start. What I'm going to do is I'm going to play that with my first finger. But underneath here, this part of my finger is actually touching the bottom of the fretboard. The reason for this is the vibrato motion involves the string going up and down in pitch. So the reason I have my finger anchored here is so that when I do my vibrato, my finger acts as a pivot point. You don't have to do it this way, but I do think this is a great way to tighten up your vibrato and have a lot of control over it. So if we now imagine that we're playing this fifth fret on the G and our finger is anchored to the bottom of the neck here, our vibrato motion should come from the arm. So as I'm doing this, I'm actually rotating the entire arm. So the amount I rotate the arm dictates how far up and down that string moves. So here's how that sounds. The vibrato coming from the arm gives you that additional control. The anchor point on the hand allows you to pivot back and forth, and I personally find it allows the string to return to its natural position much easier. The vibrato can be fast or slow, and it can also be narrow or wide. This is all down to the amount you move your arm. So a narrow vibrato would be something like maybe a player like BB King would do, which would be something like this. And then on the other hand, if you're playing rock music or metal, you may want a wider vibrato like someone like Zac Wilde may do, for instance. So the intensity there was just controlled by how much I moved my arm. You can also make this rhythmic so I could do a vibrato to quarter notes, which would be one every beat, or I could do eighth notes, so that's two per beat. It's really useful to practice your vibrato with the metronome to allow you to lock into some of those rhythmic groupings. So to show this one in context, we're going to put this into the same lick we just did in the bending exercise, but I'm going to replace the quarter tone bend with a narrow vibrato. And if I do that again with a wide vibrato, it's going to sound like this. So as you can see, the intensity and the speed, there was all determined by how much I rotated my forearm with the pivot point at the bottom of the neck. Vibrato was a great technique to work on, and it will really add a vocal and expressive element to your guitar playing. Like I said, most of the classic players have their own vibrato style, so check out a bunch of your favorite classic players, learn a bunch of their licks and see how they use vibrato in their own way to create that vocal vibe with their licks. The third and final technique we're going to look at is a slide. A slide is similar to a bend in that we're moving from one pitch to another. But this time we're not bending the string, we're just sliding our hand along the fretboard while it's fratted. So the slide I'm going to focus on here is from the seventh fret of the G up to the ninth. So you notice that I didn't actually lift my hand. I'm maintaining that fretting pressure as I slide up there to that note. It's very, very important to not press down too hard because if you do, the note will drag and you'll hear the pitch of the note in between. And you don't want to hear that unless, of course, that's the specific effect you're going for. You want to hear a smooth transition from the first note to the destination note. If you don't apply enough pressure, you'll actually lose the note before you get there. So getting the balance between pressing down enough to maintain the note but not too hard or too soft can take a little bit of practice. The main thing people struggle with when they start doing slides is actually over-sliding. A great tip you can do there is if you're sliding from the seventh to the ninth, don't worry about looking at your finger on the seventh fret. You know that finger's already in place. Look ahead to the destination note. So if I'm sliding from the seventh fret note, my eyes are going to be looking here at the place that I'm going to stop. This just makes it a little bit easier to judge where you should stop. So here's one more lick for you that's going to combine all of the techniques together. We're going to combine slides, a bend and some vibrato. So here's the lick and then we'll break it down. So the first little part of that was a triplet sliding phrase. I'm going from the seven to the nine on the G. I'm playing the eighth on the B and then the nine on the G. I'm doing that on the first three beats, one and a, two and a, three and a. On the fourth beat I'm doing a full tone bend on the seventh fret of the G. And then the end of the form landing on the fifth fret of the G and applying some vibrato. So there you go, there are three essential blues techniques that you guys can take away and put into your own solos right now. If you're just starting to build your own guitar solos, these techniques will really help take you to that next level. The licks are pretty simple, but you guys can use those in your own playing and see how you get on. But you can also apply all of these techniques and all of these concepts to whatever aspect of lead guitar playing you're currently working on. Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you've enjoyed this video. If you did, please let us know down below in the comments and also don't forget to let us know if there are any other techniques or any other guitar tips and tricks you want us to talk about in these videos. Please let us know. We can't wait to hear what you guys want to learn next. Don't forget to check out Blackstar Amplification on YouTube for more free videos like this. And if you're looking for a guitar teacher in your local area, please head over to mgrmusic.com. We've got a network of great teachers all over the UK just waiting to help you guys unlock your full potential. Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you soon.