Hi, how you doing? Justin here.
Today we're going to be talking about vibrato.
It's a very common question this one. I see questions about
it all the time on the forums and in private lessons
A lot of people don't really get how to do a vibrato,
what the different types are So there's three types
The one that we're looking at today I call "hand vibrato"
It's the most common type of vibrato that you'll ever find and it's
definitely the one that I would recommend you get to grips with first
The other types are "classical vibrato" where you tend to move your hand
left and right, side to side which is less useful on electric guitar.
It's possible to use it but it's not really what you want to be checking out
I think for electric guitar and the other one I call "whole arm vibrato"
which is the type of vibrato that few guys use like Eric Clapton and John Mayer.
It's not the most common in blues and rock but it's still definitely worth
checking out so we're going to do that in a separate lesson.
Now the idea of vibrato, of course, is to make your guitar sound a little more vocal.
It's really-really important that you get to grips with the idea of that note
moving up and down in pitch If you just play the note and you stay on it,
it tends to sound a little bit flat.
Especially where singers do that without the vibrato, it sounds really wonky.
So it's really important to realise that you got to get the note
and then you want to be changing the pitch up and down a little bit.
Now on guitar we can make it go up and down with a whammy bar but
because of the way the instrument is designed we tend to just move the note up.
Now before I talk about that, let's get to a close up and check
out the actual technique that you're going to need to use.
So I want you to start by putting your 3rd finger in the 7th fret of the 3rd string.
Get the other 2 fingers behind it, just on the 6th and 5th fret.
Or if they bunch up a little bit, it doesn't really matter.
And make sure that your thumb is over the top of the guitar.
Now you can do it without the thumb over the top but
it's a lot easier to start with the thumb over.
Now, if we just remove our fingers a little bit I want you to see that the
1st finger is in contact with the neck because when we've got our fingers down
actually the vibrato pivot point is this.
It's actually our hand that's moving, okay. So when we're playing a note
you'll see there that it's actually this motion, it's the hand.
I'm exaggerating it now so you can see.
Okay? It's not this:
If you try and do it with just your fingers by pulling your fingers in
like that you end up with this kind of quite odd vibrato
and usually you'll bend it out of tune as well because it's really important
that it comes back to the note that we call the "fundamental"
Which is the first note
So thumb over the top, 3rd finger on the 7th fret of the 3rd string.
Play the note
and then just pull it down a bit and then relax it again and again
Play and see if you can get into a little pattern of doing that
Okay, that's how you want to practice the technique
Just pulling it up
Now what I tend to think about is when I'm putting the string back up.
Instead of just going to the spot I'm looking for,
I tend to try and think of it going a little up as well.
So I'm pulling it down and when it's going back I'm trying to think
of it going slightly up, but if you imagine where the sting is
that's pulling the string down that's pushing it up, okay?
So even though we're mostly concentrating on pulling the strong down,
I want to really make sure that I come back to exactly that note.
Cause if you do the vibrato Like this:
Now the note that we hear is note in tune. That's the note that's in tune
So we have to make sure that we keep coming back to that note.
Just pulling it down
See if we can get that going nice and smoothly.
Like I said, I'm thinking about pushing it up a little bit,
but it's definitely more of a down thing.
Like it's definitely moving further down.
It's important to realise that there's 2 things that we've got to play with.
The depth which is how far we're bending it, okay? So:
You can have a really wide vibrato, like that which is a little bit exaggerated.
Okay? Or it could be quite subtle. Where it's hardly moving at all.
Just a little okay. Okay?
And then of course we've got speed so the wide one slowly will sound really weird.
Okay? The little one slowly will sound quite nice. Okay?
So we've got those two different things. Normally the wide one would be quite fast.
Otherwise it just sounds kind of wrong so you want to
experiment a little bit with all of those different things so
Just putting a finger on, see if you can get a nice small vibrato.
Where it's not moving much. Making sure again you're coming
back to the note as if it's not being pushed or pulled at all
And maybe trying to make it a little bit bigger.
And then back. Okay, then try it with different fingers.
The first finger's a good one as well.
Cause then you can really feel that kind of a pulling there.
You can really see while I've got my first finger straight.
Bend it in and then by moving my hand you can see that it's making that motion.
So then put it down.
Get use to what it feels like. Little, little motions. Big ones.
And experience. Get a feeling. How does it makes you
feel when you're doing that nice little subtle vibrato?
Okay, try it on some other parts of the neck.
Little vibrato, quite wide vibrato. Now one thing that
you're going to find straight away on the first string
You can't pull it down. So you have to be thinking now of pushing it up.
Okay, so instead of all of that feeling that you had before pulling down.
It's the same things, it's still the hand moving
Just a bit more subtle. Try it all over the neck, with all the different fingers.
I don't tend to use my little finger much for vibrato, to tell the truth.
But you probably should be able to do it. Okay?
just going through a bunch of time. Sometimes working on a
real slow nice vibrato, like you might play in a ballad.
Just thinking about something really beautiful and soft
and make the note sound really nice and vocal and singing.
Other times you might want to be doing:
Something more aggressive and fast and crazy.
That one's gone right out of tune because I've gone too crazy.
But experiment and see because there's a time and a place for every different type
of vibrato and you want to learn how to make the guitar sound how you imagine.
One last little tip for you before you start your practise, and that
will be to emulate the vibrato that you really like.
So a lot of the guitar players - Angus Young springs to mind, very,
very distinctive type of vibrato and if you really like that style of vibrato.
Something that you want to think about is really trying to copy his vibrato.
So maybe learn one of his licks that's got vibrato in it
and then sit and try to make your playing sound exactly like his.
Try and copy it. Listen to it closely. Is it very wide? Is it very fast?
Or is it very narrow? Is it slow? Really try and pick up on what
it is that he's doing and then try and make your guitar sound like that.
It's going to take you some practise, but it's totally worth it.
Even if you don't end up using his style of vibrato all the time.
The fact that you've learned how to copy it will mean that
you're better able to express yourself through the instrument. You know,
BB King another guy who's got a very distinctive vibrato and it's something-
it's really, really, important to try and emulate the stuff that you really like.
The things that really connect with you on a kind of a spiritual level
That's the stuff that you really want to copy and you want to try and really make-
incorporate those things into your playing because they obviously resonate with you
in a kind of a deep way so try and copy the things that really move you.
The stuff that you really, really like.
So hope that helps you get your vibrato on track and I'll
see you for plenty more lessons very soon.
You take care of yourselves
Bye