If you’re struggling with bending, let me give you a few things that can help.
First of all, understand that bending is hard.
If you’re new to bending and having trouble with it, don’t despair. It’s pretty tough to start with and everybody struggles with it at first.
Bending requires a certain amount of strength and you’ll need to build up your bending muscles with consistent practice, much like a body builder builds muscle at the gym.
When starting with bends, don’t worry so much about getting whole tone bends and 1 1/2 tone bends right – just bend as much as you can.
You can fine tune them later once you’ve built up your strength.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about some technical things that can help with your bends.
The first thing you want to do is have your thumb over the top of the neck.
I teach my students to keep their thumb in the back of the neck for a lot of different things but when bending, it’s important to have your thumb over the top of the neck to help pull the bend up.
Next, you want to make sure you’re using supporting fingers.
if you’re bending with the 2nd finger, you want to have 1st finger in the fret behind pushing the bend up.
If you’re bending with the 3rd finger, you want to have 1st and 2nd fingers in the frets behind pushing the bend, as well.
If you’re bending with the 4th finger, you want to have your 1st, 2nd and 3rd fingers in the frets behind pushing the bend.