Originally Posted by: BrittanyL.O.After many long weeks of practice, I finally got Freebird down (or so I thought). I had been playing along with the performance at the end of the lesson and though it sounded pretty good. However when I played it for my mother, without listening to the song, it sucked. I've come to the conclusion that my bends are out of key. I tried to correct this problem by plugging my guitar into a tuner and practicing the bends over and over. Unfourtunally, my bends are still not great and I’ve come to realize that the smallest movement really makes a difference in the pitch. So my question is how should one go about learning to bend properly? Should I just keep trying with my tuner until I develop an ear for it? By any chance are there any tricks or tips I missed out on?

Everyone has some really good suggestions on this. Another thing that you can practice doing, is a Joe Satriani and Steve Vai exercise. They suggest playing a scale up the string and each note you bend up to the next note of the scale, and then play the next note of the scale to see how close you got it. This helps you in multiple ways: scale memorization, playing bends in all positions, control, and bending in pitch. This can even be done with your pentatonics with some really big bends.


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