Gritty Blues Bends

I went Live on Social Media with this, so if you are interested in watching the video, here it is:
https://youtube.com/live/IaBZQVuPCDI?feature=share

Your solos can have perfect timing and perfect notes and still feel lifeless. Today I go live (on my birthday, no less) to show the opposite approach: how to make guitar leads sound more authentic by adding grit on purpose. We start in A minor pentatonic and build a small set of tools you can use anywhere, from a quick scrape into the phrase to a fast slide into the blues note, followed by a snappy pull-off that screams “real” instead of “exercise.” 

Then we get into the bend choices that change everything. I break down a subtle “blues bend” you do right before you leave a note, plus bigger, more aggressive bends that are about emotion and delivery, not perfection. We also talk practical gear feel, including how string gauge and scale length affect bending on guitars like a Les Paul versus longer-scale instruments, so you can stop fighting your setup and start shaping phrases. 

The most powerful idea is learning to bend from notes outside the pentatonic back into the scale. Those “wrong” notes can sound right when you treat them as a vehicle, give them space, and commit to the tone, vibrato, and staccato attack. If you want blues rock soloing that has attitude, contrast, and voice-like phrasing, this is a deep well to practice. Subscribe, share this with a guitarist friend, and leave a review, what’s one lick you want to make sound more expressive?

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Thank you!
Steve

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Transcript

Birthday Live And The Goal

Steve 1:06

Hey everybody, it's Friday, July 17th. It is actually my birthday today. Got a little extra time, so I thought I would go live and show you a couple things that I think are kind of cool that could help you with your soloing to try and make it again sound a little more authentic. And what we're gonna do is talk about adding some grit to your solos by using some unique style bands. So let's just go ahead and get started here and look around, okay? So what we're gonna do is we're gonna begin with the A minor pentatonic here, okay? If we find just that first position, we're gonna start there and then we're gonna start building out from there. So what we're gonna do here, the first thing I want to show you is this. I wanna show you this thing. So what we're gonna do there is we're gonna start in the middle of the pentatonic scale here, using 5-7-5-7. Okay? Right there. Thanks everybody.

Scrape Slide Pull Off Grit

Steve 2:01

And what I want you to do here is understand that when you're in these these two strings here, the seventh fret of the fourth string is your root, right? There is your A. Okay. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna go to the seventh fret of the third string, and what I want you to do is do this little slide that moves from seven to eight and then back. Now we're sliding up to the blues note, but again, it's meant to be just kind of this aggressive kind of gritty sound. So a great thing that you can do if you can is add a little bit of a scrape to the beginning of it. And then what we're gonna do afterwards is we're gonna do a pull off. Now I'll show you the way I usually do this, but again, do whatever you like with this. But what I'm gonna do is I've got that slide. It's very quick, and then I'm gonna do my pull-off. Okay, and then after I do that pull-off, I'm gonna go to my route and I could be done. Hey guys, thanks for joining. But what I like to do is I'll I don't know why, but I always tag it like this. So I'm just going back. That's not really the point, but I just want to show you what I'm doing here. So there's a lot of staccato going in there. There's that scrape in there, the little slide. Again, it's not just like that. You're trying to add some grit, some musicality, some aggression. You'll even notice like that staccato stuff. Instead of just all the time. Be aware of those kinds of things. Again, I'm what I'm doing, you don't need to do it verbatim, but explore these ideas when you're practicing. You know, think about staccato versus like legato or slow and fast. Like always think about contrast. So what we've got so far is just this little, the little scrape, the slide, the pull-up. And then I'm just going round robin. And a lot of times what I'll do is when I get to this five, I give it a subtle tiny, tiny little bend. And it's called a blues bend. And what happens is right before you're ready to leave to go to the root, you don't do it early because it'll sound like it's out of town. Or out of town, out of tune, okay? What you want to do is wait until right before you're ready to leave, right before you're ready to take off, you give it just a little twist, and then you go to wherever you're going, in this case, the root. So don't go and hold it because it'll sound out of tune. Just stay there, and when you're ready to leave, just wave goodbye by doing a little bit of a twist. And I'm just adding all of that together at once. And there's no tempo, rhyme, or reason. Like I could come to rest on that seven. Or not, you see? So that's the beginning of this. So start with that. And the next thing I wanna do is I want to show you the bends that I was talking about, adding some grit to your play. So the next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna go, again, we're we're playing five and seven right now in this A minor pentatonic. What I'm

The Blues Bend Goodbye Twist

Steve 5:30

gonna do is move up to nine. Now, this is one of my favorite things to do when I need some aggression, okay? Is I'm gonna bend this up. And hypothetically, it would be like a three-fret bend, but I don't want you to worry about so much about the distance. I want you to worry about the execution. Just think that you're gonna kind of bend it high, okay? And so what I'm doing is I'm bending it kind of over bending. I'm bending it high, and then what I'm gonna do is as I bring the bend back down, I'm gonna just direct myself into that seven. So you're getting this little dip of a slide getting over to the seven, and again, there's no it it's it's a consequence. It's not really anything to worry about. I just want you to understand that you don't have to go, you're not making it all nice and pretty. You're bending it up, and as you bring it back down, you're heading to that seven. Okay, let's see. I have heavy strings played with my brother's guitar, who has lighter strings and sounded way better. I use pretty light strings as well because of the stuff I'm showing you right now. So that's what I'm doing, is I'm bringing it up and then I'm dropping down. And when I get there, that's when I immediately go into that lick. And you can you can hang that bend out there for a little bit, right? It doesn't need to be there for a long time, but you don't have to be scared to hold it for a little bit. And you can even establish yourself on the seven before you do the slide. You see? So it's just, it's, it's trying to get used to understanding you're creating a sound and a feel. It's not so much about like the lick has to be perfect, it actually doesn't need to be perfect. You're looking for that that aggression. That kind of thing. And again, no rhyme or reason to the tempo. Okay? So that's one thing I want you to explore and be okay with it feeling awkward at first.

Big Aggressive Bends By Feel

Steve 7:41

Because it's not nice and pretty. It's meant to be kind of ugly. And I am doing a scrape going into that ninth fret bend. I do that a lot because it just sounds more uh Chuck says, hello Steve. I run tens on my Les Paul, but they still bend okay. And Chuck, they will because a Les Paul generally has a shorter scale, and therefore putting a little bit thicker string on there feels a little bit more comfortable. If you have a longer scale, like a 25 and a half, like an Ibanez style, a 24 fret style, it's gonna feel a little more aggressive, a little tighter if you put a set of tens on there because the scale is longer. Uh, Steve, when you bend, do you know what you are bending to, or is it just a feel? In this case, it's a feel. Okay. This blues bend, you can hear us how it's just going, uh-uh, right? It's not a specific place. There are times, obviously, when we bend, where we want to bend to the right note. But in what we're talking about today, it really has nothing to do with that. It's more of a sound, right? More of a feel. So that bend right there, what I'm looking for is just that. I want it to go up and just be kind of like I'm yelling. And then I'm dropping in, I'm dipping into this other. Okay, so I'm at five and seven here, if you're watching it uh vertically. So it's getting used to, again, sometimes when when you're not used to this sort of thing, it can feel awkward because it's it feels like it's it's out of control. And it it takes a while to get used to that. It's just something to do, right? Think about the very first time you tried to do like a pick slide or something and it felt really stupid and awkward. It can feel that way sometimes when you're doing stuff like this until you dial it in. So here's the other thing is we can take this same idea and add a couple other bends to it for you to explore. So, for instance, and just instead of just using this nine, what I could do is go up to the 12. Now, this one's gonna be more of a whole step style bend, but again, I'm not worried about perfection. It's more the delivery. And I want to get down there, and then if I need to prep myself on that seven for a second before I do the slide to make sure I can execute it properly, that's okay. So if I have now the other one that sounds really cool is if you go to 14, and again, more of a whole step style bed. And it's that giant kind of Steve Vaiish distance that sounds kind of cool. Now, obviously, with all this stuff, you really can't overuse it because it'll sound contrived then. You don't want that, okay? You just want to add this sometimes when you need a little more aggression. And remember, your aggression also comes from your guitar tone, it comes from your approach. Like playing more staccato. If I if I play very legato, it doesn't sound quite as aggressive. When I get into, you know, I can get more aggressive, maybe a wider vibrato. You kind of get the idea, right? So that's what I'd like you to work on something new for you to to kind of explore a little bit. I'm gonna give you a couple more, okay? Since I got just a little bit of time on my hands. So what we're gonna do here is we're gonna stay in that A minor position, but we're gonna do something new. We're gonna go now. What I'm doing is I'm going to the six fret, which is actually coming from what we call the diatonic scale. But I don't care about the six. I'm just using the six as a vehicle to bend to the eight. Okay. And keep that in mind because I do this a lot with my playing. You'll hear a lot of players like Joe Bonamasa will do this. Marty Friedman does this a lot, if you know who Marty Friedman is. Um, there's a lot of guys, uh uh Eric Johnson does this a lot. So the point

Bending Outside The Pentatonic

Steve 12:05

isn't the six, the point is it's it's a note that's outside the pentatonic that's being bent to a note of the pentatonic. Okay, so I'm going coming up, I'm playing seven, five, and that's leading me into this sixth bend. Now I'm not done. Okay, that sounds fine. Going to the eighth sounds great, but this is the cool part, is what I'm gonna do then is after I get done, I'm gonna slide up while this is bent. I'm gonna slide up, so I'm letting the slide back down or the bend back down as I slide. I'm gonna get to a uh 11 and I'm gonna bend it up, and it's becoming a 13, which again is another note of the scale. But that intervalic distance between this bend and this bend is what makes it sound kind of gritty, kind of cool, kind of different. Okay, so again, the 11 isn't necessarily the note that we're looking for in a scale, it's a vehicle for the bend. Okay, and it's really cool when you start thinking about that because you can go to a lot of notes that are outside the lines and bend it to something that you want. So here's another example. If I went up here into this A minor pentatonic box right here, so 12, I'm playing 12, 15 on the on the uh fifth string. And then I'm playing 12, 14, 12, 14, 13, 15, 12, 15. Some of you know that, okay? And it's okay if you don't, but that that's what the pentatonic would be. Now, instead of playing that, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go to this 14 and bend to the 15. Now I could bend that 14 to the 15 and then move on. So what happens is I'm just doing this bend and then and then moving off somewhere else. So if you think about it, I'm kind of isolating it, I'm doing the bend, and when I get done, I'm giving it just a tiny little space of of air before I start the next note. That way, kind of sounds like BB King stuff. So the first note is out of tune, so to speak, because it's not part of the scale, but it bends to the note that you want. Thank you, Ryan. That's really nice of you to say, man. And then you go wherever you want. Now, here's another thing I could do. I could bend that 14 up and then go to the 15 and bend that up like I normally would. You know, I could do something like that. It doesn't matter. You can do whatever you want. I could play. Now it's gonna sound chromatic. Now I'm playing this, again, this is my A on the 14th fret, and then I'm going to 13, which is pentatonic. 14 does not make sense. But if I play it and then do a half step bend, it sounds kind of cool. Let me show you my uh my terrible rendition of what I use my Marty Friedman influence on, which I do this a lot. So if I go to the A on the 14th fret of the third string of this pentatonic shape right here. Okay, so I can do whatever right there. So now what I can do is I could go to the 13 in front of it and bend that 13 up to the 14. So I play the 14 and then I reiterate that sound, which is an A, by playing the 13 and bending it. Now again, a great thing to do is when you come out of that band, don't bring it back down. What you'll notice about these bands that I'm doing, these out-of-tune bands, is I'm not really bringing them back down. I'm just leaving. You see? So they take some time. It takes some practice because it's unusual. Chuck, uh, let's see here. Who do I have? Eddie says, so these bends sound experimental to me. Will there be times when it does not sound right? Yes. And and and remember, Eddie, it's the delivery of the way that you're doing it, right? And it's got to be part of your style. Like for me, I like wide intervals and I like this aggressive sort of stuff. It fits what I enjoy doing. So if I go for a band, that that feels comfortable to me to play that way. Um, but I'll

When Wrong Notes Sound Right

Steve 17:05

tell you, what's interesting is when I was a kid and I was learning how to play, for whatever reason, as we are as humans, I used to think of scales as right or wrong. You were either in the right scale or you weren't. And if you if that note didn't fit, you weren't allowed by the guitar gods, you weren't allowed to play that note because it wasn't part of the scale. And so I was very diligent that way. And there are times when that's very important, right? I mean, it depends on the style of music, it depends on the the musical situation you're in. And you you want to be more accurate to what's happening with the music. This is more of a rock, blues, hard rock, you know, harder blues kind of situation that you could do this in. There are other situations too, but you have to be you have to be smart about this. So when I was a kid, I never did anything that was outside the lines. I never colored outside the lines. I did exactly what I was supposed to do. When I started learning more about this and learning that the lines a lot of times are very blurred, there's a lot of different things that you can do depending on your delivery and what feels comfortable to you. And again, the situation. You could do a pinch harmonic, Ryan, anytime. You know, again, you can do whatever you want anytime you want. That's the fun of this. Chuck says, these bending progressions you are teaching us are working on my Gibson Les Paul. That's great. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, is it it doesn't matter what you're doing it on. It's just understand that we've talked about a few different things today. Don't feel like you have to do it all. And don't try and do it all fast. The goal is to absorb something and really make it authentic. When you go to deliver it, you feel good. With that, that again, the approach that you're using. If you have to plant yourself for a second on that seven to get ready for the little slide, don't be in a hurry. It's okay. You can and then dip into the slide afterwards, right? Or maybe that's the only thing you walk away with, but that's okay. Just get used to seeing it, understanding it, how it's working, how it doesn't fit, but still functions. That way, when you get done with the lick, you can always drop into something that does make sense to you, you see, and then continue on your way. So, anyway, you guys all have a great uh weekend and um stay positive, keep practicing. And again, if you're ever looking for bumping up your game on a serious level, head over to Guitar Zoom, check out the Guitar Zoom Academy. You and I can talk to each other and talk about what it is, how it works, see if it fits you, and all that kind of stuff. All right. So God bless, take care, everybody, and uh, we'll talk to you soon, okay? Bye, everybody.