Guitar bends and vibrato
The ♭3 to major 3rd bend, and a vibrato that sounds like a voice rather than nerves.
A bend is only in tune if you check it. The standard drill is to play the note you are bending to as a fretted note first, so your ear knows the target, then bend up to it and compare. Most bends that sound wrong are short of the target rather than past it.
Use more than one finger. A bend pushed with the third finger should have the first and second behind it helping — it is a wrist movement, not a finger movement, and doing it with one finger is how you end up with sore hands and inconsistent pitch.
Vibrato is the harder one to fake. What separates vibrato that sings from vibrato that sounds like nerves is control rather than speed — BB King's is fast and narrow, Clapton's slow and wide, and both are chosen. It should be an even oscillation you start and stop on purpose, aimed at chord tones so the note it settles on resolves.
- Bend the ♭3 up a half-step into the major 3rd, then check it against the major 3rd played straight.
- Add slow, wide vibrato from the wrist on held notes, even and singing, never nervous.
- Aim bends and vibrato at chord tones (root, 3rd, 5th) so they resolve.
Where the bends are on the neck
Two bends carry most of this music, and both live on the G string in box 1. The half step is the C at the 5th fret pushed up to the C♯ at the 6th, which is the ♭3 going into the major 3rd. The whole step is the D at the 7th fret pushed up to the E at the 9th. Play the arrival note as a fretted note first so the ear has a target, then bend at it and judge the gap. Do that every time until you stop needing to.
The third one worth owning is on the B string: the G at the 8th fret bent a whole step to the A at the 10th. That one arrives on the root, which is why it works as the peak of a solo — loud, high and resolved at once, so the phrase can end there.
Strings do not behave alike. The plain G gives most easily; the high e will slide off the edge of the fingerboard if you push it upward, so it is pulled down instead. The same amount of hand movement therefore produces a different interval on each string, which is why the distance has to be learned by ear rather than by how far your fingers travelled.
What to aim at
A bend is a note that arrives, so what matters is where it arrives. Aim at chord tones. Over an A7 those are A, C♯, E and G; over a D7, D, F♯, A and C; over an E7, E, G♯, B and D. A bend landing on a chord tone sounds decided. A bend landing on a passing note sounds like the bend itself was the point, and it never is.
Vibrato is a decision about the same note, taken afterwards. Put it on notes you have landed on rather than notes you are moving through, and aim the note it settles on at something the chord agrees with.
The common mistake
Vibrato on everything. As soon as a player can do it, it goes on every note longer than a beat, and within one chorus it has stopped meaning anything — it becomes a texture rather than an emphasis, and the ear filters it out exactly as it filters out a permanent tremolo. Hold the note dead straight for a beat first, then let the vibrato in. That delay is what makes it sound like a voice deciding to sing rather than a hand that cannot keep still, and it costs nothing except the nerve to leave a note alone.