Worry the note

On a guitar you can do something a piano cannot: change a note after it has started. Push the string across the fingerboard while it rings, and the string tightens and the pitch rises. It is the sound most people hear first in a blues guitar, a note that reaches for the one above it.

Fret the note with your third finger, and put your first and second fingers on the same string behind it, so that three fingers push together. Push the string toward the ceiling and the pitch rises. Your wrist does most of the work, turning as if you were turning a key, and the fingers mostly hold their shape.

Aim before you push

A bend is only right if it arrives. Before you bend the G string at the seventh fret, play the ninth fret and listen to it, because that E is where the bend has to end. Then bend the seventh fret and stop when it matches. Each card plays its bend and then the fretted note it should reach, so you can hear the two side by side.

The most common mistake is a bend that stops short, because the string pushes back harder the further it goes. A bend that stops short sounds sour rather than bluesy. Push until the pitch matches, even when it feels as though you have gone too far.

Smaller bends

Not every bend goes a whole step. A half step moves a note up to the next fret’s pitch, and the smallest bend of all, a quarter tone, leaves the note between two frets on purpose. Both are usually played on the ♭3, and the course comes back to why when it reaches the blue third.