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Learn The Vocal Tools That Turn Scales Into Music · The Steve Stine Podcast

• 0:36
  Steve: I just want to remind you, as much as you work on fundamental elements, you know, your technique and scales and arpeggios and triads and theory and all these things, and they're all great.
• 0:47
  Steve: Okay.
• 0:48
  Steve: As long as you're learning them at the right time in your journey and they make sense and it's connecting to the bigger picture of what you're trying to do with the guitar, that's all awesome.
• 0:56
  Steve: But I do want to remind you, if you are somebody who's trying to learn how to solo, you want to learn how to improvise.
• 1:02
  Steve: One thing that I try and teach a lot to my students is the importance of what I call vocal tools.
• 1:08
  Steve: Now, basically, what vocal tools are are things like hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, bends, and vibrato, and all of the different ways that we can utilize these things in a musical and creative context.
• 1:23
  Steve: And so it's very important to always remember that it's not just whether or not you've been introduced to a particular technique.
• 1:30
  Steve: You know, I watched a video on bending or my teacher taught me about bending.
• 1:34
  Steve: That's that's important, but you've got to learn to control them.
• 1:39
  Steve: You've got to learn how to what I call own them.
• 1:42
  Steve: I I don't really use the term master.
• 1:45
  Steve: I don't know if we master anything, you know, in in our lifetime, but we do the best we can.
• 1:50
  Steve: But I think getting to a place where when you do it, you do it with absolute confidence is really important.
• 1:56
  Steve: And so with bending, for instance, um, you know, we can bend in a in a myriad of different ways.
• 2:01
  Steve: Maybe it's a blues bend, you know, maybe it's a full-step bend.
• 2:06
  Steve: You know, maybe it's a half-step bend.
• 2:10
  Steve: There's a lot of different things that we can do.
• 2:13
  Steve: We can do reverse bends or ghost bends.
• 2:16
  Steve: You know, we can do those kind of Jill Walshes or like there's lots of different kinds of things that we can do.
• 2:26
  Steve: But really, what it comes down to is we're taking a note and we're just we're we're squeezing music out of it, is what we're trying to do.
• 2:34
  Steve: Not just this is the way you do a bend and this is all there is.
• 2:38
  Steve: There's a lot of different things.
• 2:39
  Steve: You think about blues and how they'll do things where like everything's kind of out of tune.
• 2:43
  Steve: You know, that kind of thing, where it's not just whether it's a half step or a whole step, but there's all that stuff in between there.
• 2:52
  Steve: When you execute it properly, it sounds really musical.
• 2:56
  Steve: And I think sometimes people get so caught up in trying to learn theory and things like that.
• 3:01
  Steve: And again, nothing wrong with it.
• 3:02
  Steve: It's all great.
• 3:03
  Steve: But we forget that what we're actually trying to do is figure out how to make that music, make something that sounds creative and uh emotional when somebody's listening to us play.
• 3:14
  Steve: Again, depending on the situation.
• 3:16
  Steve: I mean, if you're playing over a slayer solo, maybe it's a little bit different, right?
• 3:20
  Steve: You know, different scenarios and different situations, but something to think about.
• 3:24
  Steve: So for me, that's bending, is trying to think about all the different ways that you could approach bending.
• 3:30
  Steve: And then there's bending and vibrato on top of a bend, right?
• 3:33
  Steve: You do a bend and you do that vibrato on top, which brings us to vibrato.
• 3:44
  Steve: So there's again, there's no right way to do vibrato.
• 3:47
  Steve: You can do your vibrato wide or a little bit thinner, and you could do it faster or slower.
• 3:52
  Steve: Everybody's different, but you need to be in control.
• 3:55
  Steve: That's the most important thing.
• 3:56
  Steve: When you go to play, however, you like your vibrato to sound, and maybe it changes depending on the circumstance that you find yourself in.