Using Vibrato On Higher Strings Options

[Ben Higgins]

I was inspired to write this post due to a good question I was asked by Chris S. In my lesson Ben's Vibrato Odyssey 5 I break down the act of performing vibrato by setting a sequence of bends together. As you can see and hear, I use whole tone and semi tone bends and you may notice that the note I bend to is the next note that would occur in the scale.

The only reason I did this was to make it sound harmonically comfortable whilst doing these slow versions of vibrato. If one were just using vibrato naturally in a song, you wouldn't pay attention to the exact pitch that the note was being pushed to.. not necessarily anyway. It may depend on the speed of the vibrato. If it's quick then it doesn't matter so much, it's all about the effect. If you were making a deliberate back and forth oscillation of a note at a slow tempo then the pitch would be much more noticeable and therefore if you bent to a note that was not harmonious with the context of the track then it might not sound right.

So, in the context of that lesson, that was one reason why I did that. The other reason was that it was to get people practising smaller vibrato (the semitones) and wider vibrato (the whole tones).

Thinking in terms of bending to a particular interval is a very handy training tool to help us control vibrato and increase the effect of it. Once we've learned how to do this we can kind of forget about bending to particular intervals and just let the vibrato happen. Most of the time we don't have to worry about the width of our vibrato, we can just concern ourselves only with how much of the effect we're feeling at the time.

Going back to the lesson, when I go to the B string you'll notice that I'm directing my vibrato upwards. I'm also not sticking with the strict scalar bending that I was doing on the G string.

One reason is that I wanted to demonstrate how to use upwards vibrato in a subtle way and not just pushing it up a whole tone. Another reason is that it is quite tough to use upwards vibrato and keep a particular tempo, especially if it's a quick one. It's much easier to do this with downwards vibrato I find. Try it yourself.

This particular lesson concerns itself with what I call 'regular' vibrato or 'downward' vibrato. When I use regular upwards vibrato on the higher strings I tend to only use it for more aggressive wide vibrato. Why ? Because it doesn't quite give the control and subtlety that you can get with downward vibrato. So how do I get the control I want ? I'll use sideways vibrato which is first explored in Ben's Vibrato Odyssey 1. This is really effective on the higher strings, especially above the 12th fret. If you've struggled with performing vibrato on the really high notes then try it.

I may also use downwards vibrato or even circular vibrato on the B string if the tempo allows the time for that level of control and restraint. But mainly, on the B and top E strings I'll use sideways vibrato for restraint and if I want more of the effect I'll use upwards 'regular' vibrato.

So, what about you guys ? How do you solve the vibrato issue on the higher strings ?

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