Bending Notation (to fit Guitar Playing)

In this edition of our “Guitar in Standard Notation” series, we’ll be looking at stringbends. If you don’t know what stringbends are, then you probably want to read this lesson before going any further with this post!

Stringbends

Normal bends can be written out in exactly the same way that hammers-ons are (i.e. with a curved line over the notes to be bent from and too).

So this:

…could be tabbed like this:


e--------------
B--------------
G--5b7bd5------
D--------------
A--------------
E--------------

With the example above, you would play the fifth fret (or any C note), hold that note for one beat, then bend it up one tone (two frets worth), hold it for one beat, then release the bend and hold the original note for one beat. However, sometimes it’s better to write bends with something called a “grace note”- a note that you play, but it’s just done “as fast as possible” before the actual note.

For example:

In the example above, the little notes before the big notes are supposed to be played really quickly (almost as if it’s not really there). The little note with a line through it is supposed to be played before the beat, and the one without a line through it is supposed to start on the beat (but I guess that’s a technicality, right?).

Here is the same thing in tab:


e----------------
B----------------
G--5b(7)--5b(7)--
D----------------
A----------------
E----------------

You bend the note up really quickly and hold the bend for one beat.

You can also get grace notes used for slides:


e----------------
B----------------
G--/7----/7------
D----------------
A----------------
E----------------

Half Tones

The main problem we get when notating bends is that they don’t always fit into the “traditional” 12 semitone system. In translation: you don’t always bend to an exact fret- it could be: 1/4, 3/4, 1 1/4…

How do we get around this in standard notation that only seems to have room for 12 different notes (that’s including sharps or flats).

Well, here is a quartertone (half a fret) bend:

Notice the symbol after the second note? It’s just like the sharp symbol, but only half of it is there. It’s like saying “half a sharp”. When you “sharpen” something, you raise the pitch by half a tone (one fret), so if you kinda “half sharpen” something, you raise the pitch by a quartertone (half a fret).

By the same token, here is a 3/4 fret bend:

Notice how the sign now looks like a “sharp and a half”?

If you have any questions, just leave a comment below. The next post is on notating harmonics.
Rob.

August 12, 2011 at 2:43 pm | Music Theory | No comments