Learn Guitar Vibrato
Vibrato is a classic technique used by lead guitarists to add emotion and feeling to single notes in a piece. Once you’ve mastered this technique you will be able to recreate some of the sounds of amazing guitarists like Steve Vai and B.B King.
Guitar vibrato at its most basic is the rapid changing in pitch of a sustained note. It is very different from tremolo, which is the changing in volume of a note.
There are 3 common types of vibrato used by lead guitarists today. They are:
- Lead Guitar Vibrato
- Classical Vibrato
- Whammy Bar Vibrato
Lead Guitar Vibrato
Imagine playing and releasing a guitar bend very quickly over and over again and a lead guitar vibrato is something similar.
They are basically a rapid up and down movement of your hand as you hold a note. This movement raises and lowers the pitch of the string very quickly creating an interesting sustains effect.
The key to playing great lead guitar vibratos is to vibrate your hand not your finger. When all the motion comes form you hand movement the effect works better. As an added bonus you won’t damage your finger.
There are two other types of vibrato effect commonly used on guitar but this technique works best with guitar bends and harmonics. Listen to Steve Vai to get a feel for what you can do with vibrato.
There is one huge disadvantage this type of guitar vibrato has over the following two – you can only raise the pitch of a note up. This brings us nicely onto the second type of vibrato.
Classical Guitar Vibrato
Classical guitar vibratos use horizontal movement instead of the vertical movement of lead guitar vibrato. It’s performed by fingering a note and then moving your finger back and forth to create the vibrato effect.
The major advantage this technique has over the lead guitar vibrato is that the pitch of the note can be both raised and lowered. However the technique doesn’t work very well with guitar bends.
Whammy Bar Vibrato
Whammy bar vibrato is performed using the whammy bar (or tremolo bar) on an electric guitar. You do not need to do any special technique with your fretting hand.
This type of vibrato is just a matter of trial and error using the whammy bar on your guitar.
The big advantage is has over the previous two types of guitar vibrato is that you can pull off pitch changes that are impossible with normal fingered vibrato. It can also be used to play vibrato on whole chord shapes and not just single notes.
Which Guitar Vibrato Should You Learn?
The truth is they all have their advantages and disadvantages. It’s best to learn all 3. The lead guitar vibrato will probably take the most work.
Once you master the basic vibrato techniques you will want to learn how to play vibrato bends and vibrato harmonics.
Vibrato in Guitar Tab
Vibrato is shown in guitar tab by the symbol ‘~’ beside a note. Sometimes more than one ‘~’ symbol may be used to tell you that the vibrato should be sustained for longer. The symbol does not indicate a specific timing though and normally playing vibrato is left up to the guitarist.
There are no comments yet, add one below.