Bend Steel with Your Bare Hands
Look! Up in the Sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! More powerful than a locomotive! It's... errr... uhhh.... This month we learn to bend steel with our bare hands. Forget about tall buildings and locomotives. If it will put you in the mood, go put underwear on the outside of your clothing and put on a cape.
What I have always wanted to know is this: if x-ray glasses are readily available in the backs of comic books, why doesn't the military know about it?
Bending strings is really a bit of an enigma isn't it? In one way, it's simple, but it's also talked about very little. That is why I decided to take a crack at it. What I find fascinating is that so much information is passed around about chords, scales, picking techniques and the like. But we hardly ever talk about bending. My take on bending is pretty simple: it is just another way to sound a pitch. The advantage of bending is the ability to "scoop" up to (or down from) a pitch. Bending allows different kinds of expression. The most jaded among us will bend notes only when called upon to add "feel" to their playing.
Too often we don't explore enough possibilities in bending notes. We learn a few of them when someone shows them to us, but we don't look beyond it.
Here are two ways to play an A minor scale using bends. The logic at work is that we practice things the way will use them because we play what we practice.
Let's have a look at Example 1. This uses half step bends. You may want to try playing the notes without the bends, using that as a model so you can work on keeping your bends in tune.
In Example 2, we use all whole step bends. Some of these bends are a little more difficult to play because they feel awkward at first. But the results are worth the trouble. These sound really cool!
I keep getting back to this superhero thing. One my favorite childhood memories was watching re-runs of that old "Batman" TV show (Starring Bruce Wayne) and hearing that awesome guitar riff at the opening. For me the connection between crime fighting and cool guitar was solidified. While I have been taking Karate lessons in a vain attempt to live out my childhood fantasy of being a tough guy, I have to be honest with myself: bad guys come my way and I run like hell. But afterward, I will play some tough guy music. I guess I have to be comfortable with my role in providing the soundtrack rather than actually involved in such things.
Contrary to the belief of some, no-one at Guitar Magazine (as far as I know) takes bribes for letting me publish such senseless meanderings. The truth in my mind is that the examples, once you play them are self-explanatory. Play them right and you should just "get it." All my talk about superheroes is designed for one purpose: fun. If we have fun while we learn, we associate learning with fun. Thus, we want to do it more. Why? Because it's fun. What other reason does one need? Having fun while getting better may be the most important lesson we can teach ourselves whether we play guitar or not.
"Bend Steel With Your Bare Hands" is an example of the ideas explored in the above scale exercises presented in a song. Playing this may help you get to the "Aha! I get it" place.
Two of my favorite urban legends (unconfirmed tales that everyone seems to have heard) are these:
- That George Reeves (the guy who played Superman) committed suicide by jumping off a building while in a drunken stupor having convinced himself he was his television alter ego.
- That Bruce Wayne (Batman) used to star in porn films.
Someone once tried to convince me that Underdog's true identity was really Sweet Polly Purebread. I had trouble with the idea.