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Chapter 10: Express Yourself: Making the Guitar Sing, Cry, and Wail
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Pre-bends can be tricky to master because they require a little more setup
and consideration than a normal bend. In a pre-bend, you must have the time
to bend up in silence, and you must be able to bend up to the starting note in
tune — without hearing it first. Like normal bends, pre-bends can occur on
different strings, at many different frets, and with a few different intervals
(half-steps, whole steps, minor 3rds, and major 3rds being the most common).
Still, you can practice pre-bends to feel your way to create in-tune pre-bends
with remarkably consistent results.
The harmonica also bends notes to great expressive effect. But the harmonica
can only bend notes down, and the guitar can only bend them up. So
when a guitar employs a pre-bend and release, simulating a downward bend,
it more closely emulates the characteristics of a harmonica.
Playing a Song with Various
Articulations
In this section, you put together all the techniques in this chapter (which
means that you may need to review the other methods before tackling this
section). Figure 10-15 is a song called “Express Yourself Blues,” featuring a
smorgasbord of expressive techniques. Follow these steps when starting
this piece:
1. Practice just the notes and the rhythm, without necessarily trying to
nail all the left-hand techniques.
2. Add the expressive touches one by one until you feel you can perform
the techniques, notes, and rhythms with equal confidence.
It’s better to perform the piece with authority and leave some techniques out
than to cram all the tricks in and have the result sound shaky. Blues is very
unpretentious: It’s about playing what you know with heart.
After you can play “Express Yourself Blues” accurately and from memory, then
apply different overall dynamic approaches, moving accents around at will,
playing loud here, soft there, and so on. Then try varying the rhythm a bit —
rushing here, dragging there — until you feel you can play the piece upside
down, in a wind tunnel, and under water. When you really know a piece, almost
to the point that you’re sick of it, you can start providing all the little nuances
that can’t really be pinned down or notated but that make the song your own.
In blues it’s those nuances — those indefinable but nevertheless discernible
qualities — that can turn your phrasing from serviceable to inspired.
TEAM LinG