Now we’re going to treat our A minor pentatonic and blues scales to two expressive techniques: bends and slides. In the examples below,
we’re going to be bending the D note on the seventh fret, third string up a whole step to the note E. Using your third finger on the note
with the first and second fingers behind it for support, bend the string up until the pitch matches the note E. You can test this by bending
the note and then checking the pitch against the E on the second string, fifth fret. For the remaining E and A notes on the fifth frets, use
your first finger and “roll” the pressure from the second string to the first string. You could also barre the first two strings and let the notes
ring together; these licks are commonly played using both methods.
In the next example, we see a variation of our bending lick, as well as a sliding lick that makes use of the A minor blues scale. For the slide, use the third finger to slide up the E% and back down to the D again.
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