Over the last days I thought a lot about the correct technique for bending strings and I noticed that I tend to lift my left wrist when bending. This feels quite natural to me (or should I rather say habitual? ) but most of the time I see guitarists bending with a fixed or slightly rounded wrist. So I was wondering if I should fix my technique.

I made a small video demonstration. The first two bends are with "my" technique of lifting the wrist. I have no problems reaching the pitch (strength-wise, hitting the target pitch is a different matter ). The last two bends are with the technique that I believe is the more common one. It feels a bit awkward to me and you can see that my wrist automatically tries to lift, but maybe that's just because I'm not used to letting it fixed. I don't feel like having enough strength to reach the target pitch though (which can be clearly heard).



What do you think? Does it boil down to "for some it works like this and for some like that" again or are there certain benefits if I move to the second technique?

In my opinion, you should do what works best for you. If the result is the same, there's no need to follow a different approach just because it is a more "common" one. Just take a look at Marty Friedman, his picking hand really freaks me out and still, he is amazing in his own right. There is no need for him to pick like everyone else.

To me this looks like a good technique - I try to do it the same way.

The idea is to involve the strongest muscles in anything you do on the guitar - so generally speaking the more you work with your arms/forearms the better. The reason being that you can more easily relax if you don't push the tiny muscles in your fingers and hands to do the hard work.

I don't know if this makes sense? I am working on applying this on anything I do (legato, picking, bending, sliding etc) and it is giving me good results.

edit: I should probably clarify for others reading, that my advice only works if you constantly think about being relaxed in your whole upper body.

I also don't think it's something wrong with your technique. As long as you can make bends in a right pitch, this is all that matter

I personally use the second technique from your video. It's much easy for me to control the vibrato while I make bends. I tried now your technique but I was able to play just simple bends. For complex types of bends and bends which are played after the 15 fret, my hand automatically apply the second technique.

One more thing (off topic)....I love your sweet AT10p

This post has been edited by Monica Gheorghevici: Oct 6 2016, 12:13 PM

I kind of expected those answers I'm still interested in discussing pros and cons of both techniques, though.

If I remember correctly, I've heard before that controlling vibrato with a fixed wrist is easier, just like Monica said. Now since I can't yet bend reliably that way I couldn't really compare. But I've noticed before that vibrating strings in a bend feels very awkward (with the lifted wrist). So far I've attributed this to not enough practice but maybe it's a technique thing after all?

On the other hand, Kris is probably right in that lifting the wrist uses more arm muscles (I think my biceps does more work but it's a small difference).



I love it too! I'm so happy that I made that deal

In the two last examples I think you are putting much more strain on the muscles in your hand. I would consider this a bad thing - and I would find it much harder to be relaxed while doing that.

I was trying to verify with how I do it. I think I'm more related to your first approach - the one you feel more comfortable with.

I hope my video will sort things out



This post has been edited by Darius Wave: Oct 7 2016, 10:56 AM

It looks like both wrist and arm/bicep. That is how I do it as well, however I am trying to move into using more of the biceps.

Thank you Darius!

But I actually believe that you are using the second technique I suggested. Maybe I didn't communicate clearly so far, so I'l try again Please look at this image:


Your wrist position in relation to your arm is much more similar to my position at 0:22. At 0:09, I have this huge bend in my wrist and the top of my arm even rises above the fretboard.

Now I completely understand that everyone is different and you should use whatever you feel most comfortable with. But I'm not aware of any well known player using my technique at 0:09 (or I haven't seen it yet) so my guess (and the reason why I created this thread) was that there must be something about the second technique that is superior.

Maybe I'm completely wrong with this, just trying to understand

Here is one of my favorites who uses a similar technique as yours (check out the bend at 01:10 for example)



I think this technique is superior because biceps are helping much mor ewith the bend, so it's easier to remain relaxed.

Meh, I can't watch that video due to f***ing GEMA in Germany

You can search for Gustavo Guerra. This is a very recent video of his though.

Tried that already. Sadly, all videos in his channel are unavailable to me. I watched his video on patreon. There it seems he switches between both techniques. Although that video doesn't contain many bends so it might not be the best example.

I think best point to decide about proportion between wrist and arm is when you vibrate the note while bend. I guess that's where some critical points may come out.

Sounds good, I will try to make a video of that on the weekend. I haven't tried to vibrate while bending much so far, but maybe now's the time to do it

Here's a quick vid of me adding vibrato while bending with the second and third finger. I only used the "first" technique here because I couldn't do it with the other one and since I'm probably staying with this technique I just want to make sure that I've not added some major obstacles to my playing here