How To Make Your Guitar Sound More Vocal (Through Multiple Articulations)

February 20th, 2008 Print Tip E-mail Tip

One of the ways to make your guitar playing more expressive is to make it more vocal sounding. Past masters of this technique are Jeff Beck and Steve Vai, among others. Mac Gayden played some amazing guitar in J. J. Cale's "Crazy Mama" by combining the use of a wah pedal and a slide. Likewise, Steve Miller in "The Joker" and Larry Knechtel of Bread in "The Guitar Man" came up with some wondrous voice-imitative material.

This article will focus on what you can do solely with your hands, and not with technology (such as digital delays, whammy bars, wah-wahs, etc.). This means we'll concentrate on bends, slides, hammer-ons, pull-offs and vibrato (the physical execution of these articulations is covered in another article).

Often by repeating or combining these techniques you can ramp up the vocal quality of your playing. For example, one technique used to beautiful effect (by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, and others) is to bend a note, and then apply vibrato to that bent note. This requires a fair amount of hand strength and finesse. This means you normally would employ a reinforced bend (a bend usually performed by your ring finger with your middle and index helping out behind it as well). Steve Howe in the opening section of "Roundabout" by Yes plays two quick double hammer-ons (he plays the note fretted by his index finger, and then without plucking or picking the string again, hammers-on with his middle finger and then with his pinky).

The idea is to combine these articulations in various orders, or to repeat a given articulation. Since there are 5 different articulations, you can come up with about 120 different combinations if you take the time to map out all the mathematical possibilities.

Just some ideas:

• Slide to a note, then bend it.
• Hammer-on to a higher note, then slide back down to the original note.
• Execute a double hammer-on and then apply vibrato.
• Slide up to a note, pull-off to a lower note and then apply vibrato.
• Perform a trill (repeated alternating hammers and pulls) and then bend the final note.

Obviously, some combinations will just not work from a technical standpoint, but by experimenting with various combinations you'll probably produce sounds you've never heard before. When you only pick the initial note and then combine non-picked hammers and pulls et cetera, you are playing in the "legato" style. This is how shredders can fire off such fluid and speedy guitar lines—they pick just the first note and get two or three for "free"!

Don't forget when you are trying to make your guitar solos more vocal to leave breathing room between your phrases and licks, just as a singer naturally does to catch their breath. When appropriate to the song, space out your solos with a series of self-contained motifs or packages of notes. Speed can be great, and very impressive, but a relentless 200-notes-per minute barrage can get numbing pretty quickly. Listen to the soulful artistry of David Gilmour to realize that sound and silence can play off each other to beautiful effect.

Also the relative softness or loudness (dynamics) of your playing can be a great device for capturing a listener's attention. Contrasting soft and loud passages can be a great songwriting tool, as well, and just might provide you with your "Stairway To Heaven."