Welcome to the seventh lesson of the Lead Guitar Quick-Start Series. In this lesson, we’ll be taking your self-expression to the next level by learning a technique called vibrato. Learning vibrato is key to developing your own sound as a lead guitar player. A great example of this is B.B. King. If you hear even one note with his vibrato, you can immediately recognize it’s him.
Just like many singers have unique natural vibratos in their voices, you’ll also need to find and develop your vibrato. A great way to do this is to listen to some of your favorite guitar players and take notes on what you like about their vibrato. Pulling all the best things from your favorite players will continue to add to your own sound.
There are pretty much endless techniques for vibrato, but we’ll look at the two most common types. The first vibrato technique is similar to bending. All you’ll do is slightly bend the guitar string up and down. Just like bending, you’ll be pivoting your wrist a little bit as you do it.
The second type of vibrato is similar to the way Eric Johnson does it. When he does vibrato, he releases his thumb from the back of the guitar neck and uses his entire arm to push up on the string. This method might feel a little bit more unnatural, but it creates a really interesting effect that you may want in your vibrato.
Vibrato is a very expressive technique, and there are two different elements of vibrato that you can use to change the mood or vibe of your music. The first element you can change is the speed of your vibrato, keeping it fast or slow to match the mood of your music. You’ll notice in the video that changes the speed of the vibrato has a huge impact on the overall sound.
The second element that will help you develop your voice with guitar playing is the width of your vibrato. Your vibrato can be narrow and subtle, or very wide across the fretboard. You can choose how wide you play your vibrato depending on the moment, and depending on how you want to sound.
Vibrato is a very personal technique, and there’s no right or wrong sound to it. Experiment with this technique to figure out what works for you and how you want to develop your vibrato. Pull up any of the jam tracks to practice with, and have fun trying it out.
In the next video of the Lead Guitar Quick-Start Series, we’ll be going over the last technique. We’ll be looking at legato technique, which consists of hammer-ons and pull-offs.
Are you looking for more lead guitar lessons and relevant jam-tracks? Guitareo is Nate Savage’s step-by-step video training system. It has some great songs for lead guitar and it also covers many other important styles of music including rock, country, fingerstyle, metal, classical, bluegrass, jazz, and more. Best of all it includes a huge library of original jam-tracks so you can apply everything to music.