How To Transform Your Guitar Licks Part 2 – Using Bends

How To Transform Your Guitar Licks Part 2 – Using Bends

By Tom Hess

Here are the two most common approaches you probably take when trying to make a guitar solo sound better:

Approach 1:Adding more notes to the solo.

Approach 2:Taking away the old notes of the solo and replacing them with new ones.

On their own, these approaches can be moderately effective, but you will only be able to play totally killer solos once you do the following:

Approach 3:Break down all of the licks in your guitar solo and enhance them by altering how the notes within them are being played. You don’t even have to change the notes themselves... by simply altering ‘how’ the notes in your licks are played, you can quickly make your solos sound a lot better. If you never work to get better at ‘how’ you play the notes, then ‘adding more’ notes will only achieve the same so-so results.

Check out a guitar soloing demonstration below to see and hear how this idea can easily be used to improve any guitar solo:

Here is how YOU are going to learn how to do this... Pick a solo that you want to improve and use the techniques below to slightly alter the licks that make up that solo. There are three options to choose from while doing this:

Option 1: If you have written your own guitar solos, use it.

Option 2: If you know how to play the guitar solo(s) of your favorite band/guitarist, choose one of them.

Option 3: If you do not have any guitar solos memorized (or just don’t know how to play guitar solos very well) simply think of a few guitar licks based in the same key that make sense when played together in consecutive order. Although this won’t be a ‘real’ solo, it will still help you to apply the ideas of this article so you can use them later when you DO have a solo to play.

Use these licks to get started:

Lick 1- Hear It	Lick 2- Hear It	Lick 3- Hear It

In articles I wrote before, I told you about different ways you can approach the process of improving any guitar lick with various types of vibrato, slides and double stops. You will now learn how to use bends in highly creative and unique ways to play better solos than you’ve ever played before. Note: Yes, bends are not an extremely complicated technique, but there is A LOT more to the nuances of bending strings than most guitarists realize. If you struggle to make your guitar solos sound awesome, then you haven’t yet mastered the creative bending variations I will have you practice below. So DO the exercise and watch it improve your lead guitar skills:

Guitar Soloing Technique #1: Using Bends To Shape Your Guitar Licks

Step 1: Select any guitar lick within your guitar solo.

Step 2: Look for ways to connect the notes in this lick together using bends. In general, the beginning and ending notes are the easiest ones to enhance with bends. Note: Remember to keep your bends in tune at all times.

Step 3 (optional): After bending up to the desired note, increase the intensity and aggression of the lick by using wide vibrato. The following is an example of how steps 2 and 3 would sound like together:

Example– A short guitar lick that utilizes bends and vibrato on the third note and ending note. You will notice two variations: one that uses vibrato on the 3^rd note and another that does not: Hear It

(Watch the demonstration in the video above for a more detailed example of this.)

Step 4: Play the slightly changed lick 3-5 times.

Step 5: Repeat steps two through four, only this time bend up to a new note in the lick. Then contrast the way each of your licks sound when compared to one another. Repeat this approach for every note in the lick.

Step 6: Once you’ve done this for every note, decide which variation of the lick you like the best and use it in the place of the original lick.

Step 7: Repeat this with a new lick in your solo or implement the ideas in technique #2 (and #3) below.

Guitar Soloing Technique #2: Using Bends Of Varying Speeds

In general, guitar players exclusively use bends in the following manner: They start by striking the note, then they ‘instantly’ bend the string up to match the target pitch. This is what it sounds like: Hear It (listen for the bend on the third note)

To make your guitar solos sound A LOT more creative, you need to use different speeds in your bends - specifically, you need to mix doing slow and fast bends. Here’s how to do it:

Step 1: Take one of the licks within your guitar solo and pick two notes within that lick (that are 2 frets or less away from each other on the fretboard).

Step 2: Start ‘slowly’ bending up from the lower note to the note above. This will only slightly raise the pitch of the note (briefly taking it out of tune).

Step 3: As you get closer to hitting the target note of your bend (after you began the bend slowly), ‘immediately’ speed up the bend to reach the target pitch. Then you can either return the string to the original pitch or follow the next step:

Step 4 (optional): Apply wide and aggressive vibrato to the note before you continue finishing the rest of the lick.

Example– Here is a slow bend that quickly speeds up toward the end: Hear It

Watch the video above to better understand how this is applied in the context of a guitar solo.

Choose a new lick in your solo and either repeat these steps or use the ideas in technique #3 below.

Guitar Soloing Technique #3: Using A Pre-Bend

A pre-bend occurs when you bend the string without actually picking it, then strike the string in order to sound the ‘release’ of the bend. Here is an example: Hear It

Pick any note within your guitar lick and make it sound more creative by using a pre-bend. Begin by bending the string (WITHOUT striking it at first) by either 1/2 or whole step, THEN picking the string and releasing the bend. Listen closely to determine which note the pre-bend works with best on.

Example: Hear It Observe the slow pre-bend on the first note of this guitar lick (it’s a variation of Lick 1 shown at the beginning of the article)

Keep going through this process for the rest of your solo in order to build tons of innovative variations for each individual lick. Then determine which licks you like best and record the new (slightly changed) solo. Once you’ve done this, observe the creative difference between the original lick you began with and the newer version... you’ll be totally surprised by how much better the new one sounds than the original!

String bends are just a single tool you can use to enhance your guitar solos/licks. The main idea of this exercise is to demonstrate how many great ideas you can squeeze out of a single technique. You can also apply the same approaches in this article using other techniques, such as slides, vibrato, string muting, sweep picking, etc (as well as other types of string bending).

The simple techniques above can be used to make any of your guitar solos sound MASSIVELY better! That said, there are a lot of alternate concepts you must learn about being more creative and playing innovative guitar solos. Learn how to quickly improve at lead guitar.