Andy Timmons On Targeting Chord Tones With String Bends
MELODIC MUSE by Andy Timmons
THE BENDS, PART 4
String bending offers us guitarists a highly effective way to evoke a wide range of sounds and emotions from our instrument and emulate some of the qualities of the human voice, such as adding vibrato to a note, or seamlessly sliding, or gliding, from one pitch up or down to another, what is known as glissando. All of our favorite players use bending as an essential expressive tool when soloing. In this fourth installment examining this highly effective and useful technique, Andy Timmons plays through a 24-bar minor blues progression in the key of C# minor, touching on many different approaches to string bending.
THE BENDS, PART 4
String bending offers us guitarists a highly effective way to evoke a wide range of sounds and emotions from our instrument and emulate some of the qualities of the human voice, such as adding vibrato to a note, or seamlessly sliding, or gliding, from one pitch up or down to another, what is known as glissando. All of our favorite players use bending as an essential expressive tool when soloing. In this fourth installment examining this highly effective and useful technique, Andy Timmons plays through a 24-bar minor blues progression in the key of C# minor, touching on many different approaches to string bending.
Transcript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 Hey, everybody.
00:18 Welcome back.
00:19 Andy Timmons here, melodic muse for Guitar World.
00:22 And we're going to carry on with some C-sharp minor blues.
00:25 For those of you curious, this track that I'm playing to
00:27 is actually from my In The Jam course
00:29 I did for True Fire a while back.
00:31 Really great sounding bunch of tracks
00:33 that you can jam on with me on.
00:34 If you're curious to check that out, please do.
00:36 But let's dig back in.
00:37 We're going to turn on a bit more gain
00:39 and play some blues here.
00:40 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:44 [GUITAR SOLO]
00:47 [GUITAR SOLO]
00:51 [GUITAR SOLO]
00:54 [GUITAR SOLO]
00:58 [GUITAR SOLO]
01:01 [GUITAR SOLO]
01:05 [GUITAR SOLO]
01:08 [GUITAR SOLO]
01:12 [GUITAR SOLO]
01:40 Starting the solo, I'm building up--
01:43 [GUITAR SOLO]
01:46 --just kind of building up to the pentatonic.
01:48 [GUITAR SOLO]
01:52 But as soon as I choose a bend, it's
01:54 clear that I'm thinking of tension.
01:56 It's on a C-sharp minor 9.
01:58 But I decide to bend from the third to the fourth.
02:01 [GUITAR SOLO]
02:05 Because that wants to go somewhere.
02:08 It needs to resolve.
02:09 [GUITAR SOLO]
02:12 So I would have been up to it.
02:24 Maybe beyond it.
02:26 It's a major third.
02:27 [GUITAR SOLO]
02:30 So that might be a little difficult for some
02:32 to get all the way up to that pitch, but try.
02:35 [GUITAR SOLO]
02:38 There, I'm just barely touching on it.
02:40 But I'm very accurate with the pitch.
02:42 [GUITAR SOLO]
02:45 Continuing on, I bend up through the scale
02:58 like we worked on earlier.
02:59 I made use of that C-sharp minor Dorian.
03:02 [GUITAR SOLO]
03:07 It's a nice way of kind of just building a little bit
03:09 and playing some melodies.
03:10 [GUITAR SOLO]
03:13 And I switch to the B string, not only on the G string.
03:15 [GUITAR SOLO]
03:19 At the end, I had to pull out one of my favorite bend
03:26 licks from my buddy Steve Lukather, "End of Rosanna."
03:30 That really wide interval.
03:31 [GUITAR SOLO]
03:35 But now, of course, that Rosanna's in G. This is C-sharp.
03:38 But I'm on the B string, bending from the E to G-sharp.
03:43 [GUITAR SOLO]
03:46 Probably coming from Albert King at some point, or Hendrix.
03:51 [GUITAR SOLO]
03:54 But it's done in a triptych for--
03:56 [GUITAR SOLO]
04:00 And I do the same bend from the B to the--
04:06 yeah, what is it?
04:06 B to D-sharp.
04:07 [GUITAR SOLO]
04:10 So first on the B string, E to G-sharp.
04:12 [GUITAR SOLO]
04:15 And then--
04:15 [GUITAR SOLO]
04:18 So as you can see, there's so much potential with bending
04:30 to add to your melodies.
04:32 I've hopefully given you lots of ideas
04:34 of how to bend through the chord changes,
04:37 how to apply tension and release from bending to certain notes,
04:41 releasing to certain notes.
04:43 So please, hopefully you're inspired by this.
04:46 Keep playing.
04:47 Keep working at this bending.
04:49 And I'm going to do the same thing.
04:50 And we'll see you next time.
04:51 [GUITAR SOLO]
04:55 (upbeat music)
04:57 (upbeat music)