Bending isn’t just a Blues thing, y’know! :)

In a Major Scale context, knowing how to bend strings properly is fantastic! But you should know that bending is not some random thing you throw around willy-nilly. You must raise the pitch of one note to another.

If you string bending randomly, it’ll sound awful! The trick for successfully bending in the Major Scale is to know the following note in that scale. You’ll often have to be thinking of the next pattern, which is where many people fall off!

🎯Long term, you’ll find your ear will just know how far to bend. But, to get there, you’ll have to train for it!

In this lesson, we’ll walk through all the basics you need to know to bend your strings properly - but not the technique and mechanics of the movement. If you need help with that, please see this lesson on String Bending.

By the end of the tutorial, you’ll get a suggested practice routine to help you learn faster. If you’re following along with my Intermediate Guitar Courses, don’t miss out on that. Now, let’s get stuck in - we’ve got a few things to cover!

What is String Bending on Guitar

When you do a string bending, you're bending one note up to the pitch of another note. It’s not just an arbitrary amount where you just do a bend! Sometimes, you may want things to be a bit more crunchy (as in out of tune!) so that you might break that rule. But generally speaking, you’ll always bend one note to another note.

As we’ve discussed before, you’ll need to know the note you’re bending to. That’s a huge deal, and your string bending won’t sound good if you don’t work that out!

How to Bend Strings in a Major Scale context

Every time you want to bend a note within the Major Scale, you’ll need to know if the note you’re bending needs to go up a semitone or a tone to get to the following scale degree. That’s because, as you should know, the Major Scale comprises tones and semitones!

Generally speaking, we do string bends on the thinner three strings. You can do it on the thicker strings too, but start off focusing your attention on the thinnest three strings of each pattern, one at a time because they’re by far more commonly used.

🚨 Check out these Intermediate Guitar lessons if you’re still not confident with Pattern 1 of the Major Scale!

You should learn how far you're going to bend the highest note on each string of each pattern. When you do it that way, you'll eventually know where all of the notes you can possibly bend are. At first, it might seem like a mission to think of all the notes, but you’ll start to hear and feel how much to bend once you've been doing it a bit.

💡 Bend accuracy is something you might like to revisit every now and then to ‘check your calibration,’ notably if you change your string type or gauge! That makes everything feel different, and it might have you over or under bending.

If you are not practicing string bending already, you should add it to your routine! Following along with the Major Scale Maestro course? There’s a suggested schedule for you by the end of this lesson!

Now let me give you a few guitar tricks to help you nail string bending in the Major Scale! We’ll use Pattern 1 - watch the video lesson to learn more.

String Bending First Steps

Ok, so you now know that the trick for successfully bending in the Major Scale will often be to think of the following pattern. For example, if you’re using Pattern 1, you might need to think about Pattern 2 to get your string bending right!

There are a few more things that can help you out. Here they are:

String Bending First Steps #1 - Mapping

With your scale pattern map, an excellent thing to know is which thin string notes will bend how much. Work that out first by thinking about the following scale pattern, then put it into practice. If you can’t get your string bending in tune, add some extra practice time for it!

Again - take your time and make sure you get this right. There’s no point in rushing it - bending sounds incredible when you get it right - awful when you don’t!

String Bending First Steps #2 - Hear It

You’ll be pleased to know that as you get better at navigating your way around the patterns, you will find that you can hear how far to bend. So when you start learning to bend strings, you might find yourself thinking a lot. Still, as you get more experienced, you will almost certainly find that you hear the bend rather than calculate it. Encourage this if you notice yourself doing it!

String Bending First Steps #3 - Have Fun

I suggest spending some time improvising in each pattern, starting with Pattern 1. Just jam and have fun - but keep the focus on exploring string bending. Start in keys that you are familiar with, then graduate outside to new keys!

It can be tricky to practice string bending on your own. You might not always know if you’re in tune or not. So, I recommend you get some professional quality backing tracks, use a looper pedal, or play with your jam buddies.

If you want to successfully learn how to bend strings on the guitar, don’t skip practicing it! Just following the tricks you’ve learned won’t help you if you don’t dedicate some time to practice this new skill.

String Bending Song Practice

A great song to practice string bending is Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton. You can even use it to improvise in the Key of G! Just jam along with the track over the singing. I’m sure Eric Clapton wouldn’t mind unless you’re doing so while being vaccinated. :) If you want chords, tabs, and lyrics to follow along with my song tutorials, check out JustinGuitar Tabs!

Practice Unit 7

Alternate Days - A/B

Like we did in the previous unit, your practice routine for this course should be 10 minutes! But for this one, you’ll have two different routines that you should practice on alternating days.

Day A

Exercise 1 - 5 Minutes

The first practice session is dedicated to working on your melodic sequences. You’ll practice the ones we’ve just learned, and feel free to include practicing scales in 3rds as well!

Start working with Pattern 1 of the Major only. Get comfortable with it before you start applying the sequences to other scale patterns. It really does make a big difference! If you get it right in one scale pattern, it's a lot easier to move it around to different patterns afterward.

Exercise 2 - 5 Minutes

The second part of the practice would be improvising with a backing track, a looper pedal, or a jam buddy using the melodic sequences. Just play around with little sections of one of the patterns that you and that feel nice under your fingers.

If you don’t have a jam buddy, don’t hesitate to check out my backing tracks. Improvising and deliberately using melodic sequences is the best way to practice everything we’ve learned so far. Force yourself to improvise for at least 5 minutes - it’ll pay off later on!

Day B

Exercise 1 - 5 Minutes

The second practice day for this unit focuses on string bending. The first five minutes should be working on the Mapping. The critical thing here is to know which notes to bend and how much. You’ll have to be thoroughly familiar with the Major Scale!

Exercise 2 - 5 Minutes

As soon as you can get your string bending in tune, have some fun improvising and getting creative. You should spend the other 5 minutes of your practice session improvising with string bending.

Jam buddies are always the best way to practice your improvisation skills. If you can play with someone - don’t hesitate to do it! Pay attention to make sure your bending is in tune, and don’t forget all the tricks you’ve learned to spice up your guitar solos.

Again: make sure you get your bends in tune. It sounds awful if you don’t! And don’t forget: practice makes permanent!

Don’t have a jam buddy? Check out the JustinGuitar Jams - it feels like playing with a real band!