Bending to Pitch

A bend that lands in tune makes a solo sing; a flat one makes it sound unsure. This chapter teaches you how to bend guitar strings to pitch, every time, using A minor pentatonic as your home base.

You start with whole-step bends, playing the reference note first and matching it with three fingers and a turning wrist. Then you learn half-step bends up to the blue note and wide step-and-a-half bends, two distances your ear has to learn separately. Next comes bend and release, where the way back down is a note in its own right, followed by pre-bends and unison bends, the wobble that tells you when two strings meet in tune. The last lesson puts it all together in short blues and rock bending licks.

Every exercise plays in your browser with a click, so you always have the target pitch in your ear, and the tempo ladder lets you speed up only when the bends stay accurate. Pass the checkpoint at the end of each lesson and your string bending will be controlled, expressive and in tune.