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Vibrato excercises?

1K views 4 replies 4 participants last post by  GuitarAkuma 
#1 ·
I find it vaguely depressing that there are a billion tutorials on various chromatic excercises to develop your speed, but there aren't any decent ones on developing a nice vibrato.

I'm ok with vibrato on unbent notes. Not that it's great or anything. But I have problems controlling my vibrato on bent notes. Does anyone have any good excercises for this?

Thanks.
 
#3 ·
Bent-note vibrato is really more a function of comfortable left hand positioning than it is an "exercise" you can perform. Let's look at your left hand and go from there.

First thing's first: make sure your left hand is comfortable on the neck. Grip the neck loosely (not to play, just wrap your hand comfortably around the neck as if you were getting ready to play something). Your thumb should rest gently against the center of the back of the neck. Your fingers should be at an angle to the longitudinal axis of the guitar; my fingers rest uniformly about 45 degrees to the neck, and point back towards my body.

When you go to make a bend, your thumb should rotate up to the top of the neck, if not make a slight hook over the top (some people hook further over, I don't, simply because hooking the neck too much slows you down). The palm of your hand where your index finger meets your palm should be on the bottom of the neck, and acts as a stabilizing point around which your vibrato will center. When you bend, bend clearly up to the note you want. If you're not in tune, your vibrato is moot (it'll all sound very bad).

Once you can accurately and quickly make a bend to the note you choose in tune, you must learn to lighten your touch. As you learn to bend up, I find my students tend to have a death-grip on the fretboard because they're concentrating so hard on making the bend in tune. You have to learn to make that bend first, but secondary to that, you have to learn to make it with a light touch. When you learn to lighten that touch, your vibrato will follow quickly. Bend up, again, with a the lightest pressure you can, then release the pressure a little more and try to let the string try to return to its rest position. This is one way your vibrato can be developed. Let the string do the work for you. It wants to release its energy, let it. But just as it begins to, force it back to the note you bent it to.

This is a very complicated explanation of a very simple thing.

1.) Learn to bend accurately to the note you desire
2.) Learn to perform that bend with a light touch
3.) Use physics against the guitar; the string wants to return to its neutral position. Let that work for you.
4.) As the string begins to release its energy, you're going to force it back to the note you bent up to.

That's really all there is to it. Or at least, all there is to it for me. Remember that light touch. "Visualize" the note you're going for. Make that mindful connection to your instrument and the rest follows with time and practice.

-Roger
 
#5 ·
Dude!

In order to get good vibrato you need finger strength to do it, here is a quick and classy way to get it WHILE developing a nice vibrato as a side effect:

Play the 5th fret on the G string with the first finger doing as much vibrato as you can manage, then slide up the the 8th fret and repeat do this until you reach the 12th fret the repeat going back down to the 7th fret.

Now repeat the whole thing on the D, A and low E strings. THEN start all over using your SECOND finger, the repeat using your 3rd and finally 4th fingers.

This develops strength, control and accuracy and gives a wicked vibrato!
 
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