How to Play Unison Bends for Blues Rock Lead Guitar

In this lesson, we are going to take a look at unison bends. Originating in Rock and Blues, it’s a very common and widely used bending trick that will not only improve your phrasing, overall bending intonation, and vocabulary in the music genres mentioned earlier, but it will also make your solos much more lively and expressive.

How to Do Unison Bends

We will start with a simple exercise and the basic movements and then build upon that with a more ambitious example and variations of expression. A true all-rounder, you can use unison bends in many other genres: Country, Bluegrass, Crossover, Fusion, and even Metal.

Feel free to take this in any musical direction you like and integrate it into your own playing style. Spice up your solo with different unison bends and add some color by moving the trick around the fretboard diatonically, chromatically, or symmetrically—you can even use distorted sound in order to make it sound extra cool!

In order to get the most out of this lesson, you should know how to hold a guitar properly (how and where to place your hands and fingers) and how to pick and strum strings (single notes, chords). Theory knowledge of the basic major and minor scales as well as pentatonic scales are beneficial, but not a must. Make sure to warm up beforehand, especially if you are not used to bending strings a lot. There is a warm-up exercise provided, but feel free to warm up with any exercise you like.

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Remember, no one is born a guitar master. But with regular practice, you’ll soon become the guitar player you’ve always wanted to be!