Vibrato: Making your guitar sing (or scream)

Many guitar players do not understand the importance of vibrato. It is a technique that is often neglected, or left till last in a guitar players practice schedule. But I am going to tell you why vibrato is one of the most important techniques you will ever learn on the guitar.


All the time you see guitar players who are doing these really awesome shredding runs in a solo, and its all extremely cool, until they reach that final bent or sustained note of the run and the sound just resembles an angry ally cat, screechy and piercing against the ear drum. This is because they are not using vibrato, or are using a very bad vibrato.


Vibrato is how you make your guitar sing. It is how you give your notes more feeling, soul or impact. A good vibrato can turn an average solo into a great solo.


Vibrato basically means to vibrate the note and can be done in a number of different ways. The simplest is to just vibrato your fingers when fretting the note, this is known as classic vibrato, but this doesn't do much on an electric guitar. The most common vibrato you will come across on electric guitar is a bend vibrato, which is done by bending the note back and forward to create the vibrato sound, this is very common in blues, rock and metal. Other types of vibrato include slide vibrato, which is used heavily by George lynch, and tremolo arm vibrato.


check out these examples:






I admit my vibrato in the first example is a little exaggerated, but you can hear it gives the note a lot more impact and will make it stand out much better against a backing track. But example two is just flat and dull and you get board very quickly.


So, now you have read this I want you to listen to one of your favourite guitar solos. Listen closer to the bends and long sustained notes. You will hear that they are not just still, they have a shaky sound, they have vibrato.


Who really wants to listen to some still, dull, sustained note? Give it some soul, give some venom, give it some vibrato!