BLIM 2: Masterclass with Seth Rosenbloom

I’m about half way through watching this at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnT5jvu7yLU&t=2463s . A couple of comments:

  1. What are major and minor third bends as never heard of this before.

  2. He talks about recording himself to analyse his playing. At his level of playing I can see that he would pick up things that a lot of people would not, but for a beginner I don’t see the benefit. I’ve said this before but I know when I’m doing something not right so why would a recording help this?

Hi Stuart,

  1. I believe he means bending the 1 to the 3 or 3b, e.g. A to C# or C. As others pointed out later in the thread, these are very big bends indeed and not for beginners.

  2. IMHO - while I can spot ‘big mistakes’ without a recording, I do find recordings (video and audio) useful to spot less obvious mistakes e.g. with technique, rhythm, bending in tune, note choice over a chord, etc. The further into BLIM I got, the more mistakes I saw :slight_smile: If you haven’t tried it yet, give it a go, e.g. record the Unit 1 lick medley.

Cheers
Ashu

Edit: Corrected my answer re bends just in case I confuse future readers.

Beginners like me just dont have enough guitar skills to give the best self assesments while actively playing, In my case I dont even have enough system resources for both tasks.

I will give you an example of how this helped me. I just came from playing acoustic only. BLIM course starts and here we go. I put up my first videos. I felt it was ok. I knew there were some things. The first thing pointed out was by Richard. He was like “you playing slightly sharp, you are pressing way too hard.” Wow, I never saw that. I have a solid musical back group in vocals and in the horn, but thats something I never experted didnt catch that, it lead me into an overall realization that I needed to make some changes in my approch to electric . That was a big deal for me suddenly the tone of everything sounded a little bit better, of course it is much harder to be light and gental than smash mouth and I am still working on this but at least now am not learning wrong.

Good luck

Hi Stuart -
Minor and major thirds are intervals - a measure of distance between two notes. A minor third is 3 semitones and a major third is 4 semitones. These are big bends, I wouldn’t worry about them yet and concentrate on one and two semitone bends for now.

I understand what you’re saying about recording - sometimes it’s easier to listen back for a specific thing. Rather than just asking ‘does this sound good or bad’, ask ‘Is my strumming in time’, or ‘do my chords sound clean’, ‘Am I leaving space in my solo’. Mortals like us are often making a lot of mistakes, so trying to focus on one at a time and addressing that is often easier.

Good luck!

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From a beginner perspective video recording gives you an opportunity to analyse you fretting and picking hand techniques with the technique video lessons e.g. comparing your vibrato and string bending technique with that demonstrated by Justin. It could help ensure you’re working on the foundations of the technique correctly.

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The usual string bending for most people is either a whole tone bend (equivalent to bending to a pitch two frets up) or half tone bending (bending to a pitch one fret up).
Named as interval they are bends of a major second and a minor second respectively.

Intervals are in Practical Music Theory Module 5.1.

Or here: Intervals, scale degrees and more

Some guitarists like to play more extreme bends. Bending a note the equivalent of three frets is often called a one and a half tone bend. In interval terms it is a minor third. Even more extreme, a bed equivalent to four frets up is a major third bend, or two tones. Not for the faint hearted or someone new to bending techniques. And very rarely used.

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How do you do these without breaking strings I wonder?

I did actually give it a go. I recorded the intro and outro solos to Wonderful Tonight. Sounded OK to me although about as far removed from Clapton as you could think!!

Agreed.

That’s about my limit at the moment!

Never heard them called that as far as I know.

Not got that far yet.

Do you have an example of who plays these?

Seth said he plays them and it was one of the reasons he dropped back to gauge 11 from gauge 12 … ease of making these big bends.

David Gilmour uses tone and a half (minor 3rd) bends all the time.