How to Get Great Vibrato on the Guitar!
From one of my last blogs, I spoke about tone, and how important it is to sound like those great guitarists. In my opinion, 85% of your tone comes from your fingers. As a result, how you use vibrato can make you a great guitarist or just a good guitarist. As musicians, it is our duty to convey our musical ideas on our instruments in the most natural way. What is more natural than singing? So, if we can make our instruments emulate singing, we will be able to make the listener enjoy our sound.
As guitarists, there are different types of vibrato – fast, slow, wide, narrow, and delayed to name a few. Free-hand vibrato, as made famous from Eric Clapton, is also another type of vibrato that can utilize all of those types as well.
It is our job to sound as natural as possible when doing vibrato. Having control over the strings is important to be able to execute vibrato with feel and correct intonation! Besides having the technique down, there is only one way to make it sound as natural as possible. Listen to the great singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Whitney Houston, Pavarotti, and even pop artists of today like Jessie J. The control they each have and had over their voices were incredible, and it is our job as guitarists to sound as controlled as that!
Notice how in-depth I can get into this? It is THAT important. Become obsessed with it! Your tone thanks you!
