Learn Acoustic Guitar - How to perform a guitar string bend

Guitar string bends are an expressive technique that almost add a voice to your guitar playing.

In theory they are fairly simple to perform. All you have to do is strike a string on your guitar and then push the string either upwards or downwards to raise the pitch.

It sounds like a piece of cake but it’s not that easy…

In practice this ’simple’ technique is a tough one for most new guitarists to master.

So how do you play guitar string bends?

Below is a useful guide on how to play a string bend…

You perform a string bend by fingering a string and then ‘pushing’ that string up or down, in effect bending it.

When we do this we basically shorten the length of the string, which in turn raises the strings pitch. The more you shorten the string (bend it) the more the pitch rises.

It takes a lot of strength in your fingers to bend a string to the correct pitch and the technique is much easier to perform if you wrap your thumb around the neck and use it as a pivot point.

Once your thumb is in the correct position you are ready to do the bend. In general you will need more than one finger, and normally 3 to bend a string the required amount.

When you first try to play a bend you are not going to be able to change the pitch very much at all. Don’t let this failure get to you.

And that brings us to the last point.

If you don’t bend to the correct pitch you haven’t played the bend correctly.

A clever technique you can use to practice this is to play a note on a particular string, move your finger to a lower fret (1 fret lower when you’re starting off) and try and bend the string at the lower fret so you sound the previous note.

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