Skip to main content
Bend

Pushing a string up or pulling it down in order to manipulate the pitch

Sam Blakelock avatar
Written by Sam Blakelock
Updated over a week ago

Guitar strings – particularly the three treble strings – can be pushed up (and sometimes pulled down) to alter the pitch of a fretted note. Bends give the guitar an expressive vocal quality and allow us to explore microtones in between standard fretted notes.

This means you can bend a note to a pitch that’s less than a half step up (a quarter tone, for example,) or as high as a major third.

Bending is common in blues and rock music, often associated with players like Albert King, Freddie King, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and John Mayer.

Did this answer your question?