How To Play Speed Guitar Licks More Musically Using Excellent Vibrato Technique
Common mistake while playing guitar with speed:
Playing as fast as possible all the time.
Very tempting, but here’s why you shouldn’t do this:
Playing fast all the time becomes boring or messy sounding because it has no release to the tension you build.
Great guitar licks and solos often have a solid a sense of tension and release.
What’s a good way to balance out your speed with a sense of melody or tension release?
Answer:
Vibrato guitar technique.
Start giving your speedy guitar solos more emotional expression while releasing musical tension with vibrato technique using these ideas:
Practice Adding Vibrato To Every Final Note
Adding vibrato at the very end of your musical motif gives it more intensity and emotional presence. This ends your metal guitar licks with intensity, leaving listeners in awe.
Play a guitar phrase by adding vibrato to whatever notes you want, but make sure to hold the last note of the idea momentarily before applying the vibrato.
This makes a huge difference in the amount of expression produced.
This is the initial step towards using vibrato guitar technique to emotionally boost any metal lick.
Improve Your Vibrato Technique Using A Rapid-Fire Practice Approach
It’s amazingly common for guitarists to want to improve their vibrato while not actually practicing it. Fortunately, you can very quickly acquire killer vibrato guitar technique by practicing just 5 minutes a day on it.
This is done by simply practicing adding vibrato to every note of a given guitar idea.
Focus on making every vibrato perfectly tuned while adding the technique to each note.
Repeat this for 5 minutes while using every possible combination of fingers to play the notes. This helps you get exceptional vibrato for all your fingers, not just your index or second fingers (the absolute most commonly used fingers for vibrato).
Master The Ability To Express Specific Emotions Using Different Kinds Of Vibrato
The following are some examples of different kinds of vibrato and concepts for when to use them:
Play vibrato that is either a half or full step wide and is applied at a fast rate.
This creates tons of emotional power to a lick. This is also great when you want to release the tension developed by a fast metal guitar lick on a note that is sustained several measures.
Make your vibrato slow and narrow in range
This is generally applied by merely fretting a note and moving your finger back and forth inside the fret. This is awesome for slow or relaxed parts of a guitar solo.
Use each type of vibrato while working on the approach above to quickly master the power to express yourself with this technique.
Make Bends For Intense Using Vibrato Technique
Adding vibrato to your bends gives them extra live (sustain ) – making them sound much more powerful and emotional. This technique is a must for playing mindblowing metal guitar solos that demand attention!
Alternate using a bend with and without vibrato applied at the peak.
The difference in emotional expression is huge!
Note: it may take you a long time to get really good using this strategy.
Make this a priority in your practice to master it fast and begin playing emotional and badass metal guitar solos.
Lastly, it is essential to know that you do not need to apply vibrato immediately to every note. This is something many guitarists never consider (making it worth repeating several times).
Understanding this easy principle already puts you way ahead of most guitarists.
Rather than applying vibrato the second you strike a string, you also have the option to delay the application of vibrato.
This is performed using the following approach:
Attack the string for the note you are fretting and let it sound on its own momentarily.
After a second, apply the vibrato. This very short delay adds a sense of expectancy that makes the vibrato even more intense!
Find out more about how to play killer vibrato to greatly enhance your metal guitar playing by checking out this article about how to make your vibrato guitar technique sound terrific.