Guitar Vibrato
Vibrato techniques for a guitarist are often one of the most distinctive parts of a particular guitarist’s playing. It also happens to be a technique that the vast majority of guitarists are terrible at, as well. There is a difference between stylistic distinctions from one professional guitarist to another and an amateur that thinks the whole point is to shake the string as fast and as hard as possible. As subtle as it might seem, this is one of those techniques that really help define the difference between a really good sounding guitarist and one that sounds mediocre even playing the exact same song.
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The whole concept of vibrato is quite simple. It is a slight fluctuation in pitch around a specific pitch, just enough to be noticeable, but not enough to sound like a new note entirely. This can subtly bring interest to an extended note. Done properly, it can also extend how long a note lasts, which is also useful for a long held note in a solo. While vibrato bend is not usually timed specifically, the guitarist should be maintaining a consistent pace and rhythm when using it. There is also a tendency of many guitarists to start using vibrato as soon as they strike a note that uses it. This can make a note sound a little bit sharp, because they already started the vibrato before they plucked the string. Any vibrato note should be left alone for a short time before starting the vibrato. This allows the listener’s ear to align to the correct note.
The following is a broken down example of vibrato whole notes. This is a good example to practice to get used to making very precise, uniform small bends that actually form the vibrato technique. This may seem slower that the standard vibrato you normally hear, but once you have it down at this pace, then you can do faster vibrato, while still maintaining the uniform nature of the bends.
Each of these notes should be performed with a different finger. The index finger is the only one that should be used alone when creating a vibrato outside of fairly unusual situations. The middle finger should be backed up by the index finger, while the ring finger should be backed up by the middle and index fingers. Doing this allows the guitarist to maintain better control over the string, and with this particular technique, control is the absolute key to making this technique sound good. It doesn’t matter how fast or hard you use this technique (both of those often make a vibrato sound worse if used incorrectly), you need to keep a consistent pitch fluctuation to perform this technique.
You may have noticed the pinky is not used in the above example, and there is a reason behind it. Using the pinky for vibrato is fairly rare, and more or less is so heavily backed up by the ring finger that it is almost the same thing in actual performance. In most cases, the note will be started by the pinky finger, which will continue to fret the note, but the actual work of the vibrato is still performed by the ring finger. This may sound odd, but when pinky vibrato does pop up in a song, you will find yourself doing this very naturally if you have taken the time to develop your ring finger vibrato technique.
While it is simple to practice, this technique is very deceptive in difficulty. It requires a guitarist to make very small, very controlled, very precise movements, and doing so well does take time to develop. It may not seem like the most exciting technique to develop, but the audience can very clearly hear the difference between someone with a good technique and a poor technique, even if they don’t exactly know what vibrato even is. If you put the work into it, you will be very pleased with the end results.