Pre-bend

Okay, maybe it’s not a word found in any dictionary, but a “pre-bend” is an essential part of almost any guitarist’s book of tricks. Essentially, a guitar player will bend a note up a half step — or even a whole step (or whole tone) — before picking the string. Once the string is bent upward in pitch (let’s say from C to C#) it’s picked, then brought down to the actual pitch (in this example, C natural). The pre-bending technique quickly becomes second nature, and is quite effective when soloing, particularly along with hammer-ons and pull-offs.