Screech

December 4, 2009 10:18 PM

That guitar bend technique where, with distortion on, you bend a string up to meet the pitch of an adjacent string...what's that called?

Is there a specific name for this technique?

Here's a few examples:

Pavement - Grounded

Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire

Pixies - Hey

posted by frankly mister to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

It appears to be called a unison bend, and the effect is dissonance between the two close-but-not-the-same notes. The warbling sound you end up hearing is a beat, and the beat frequency is determined by the distance between the two source frequencies. The beat slows as they get closer and goes away entirely when the two frequencies are identical.
posted by knave at 10:30 PM on December 4, 2009 [2 favorites]

Seconding knave; I've only ever heard it called a unison bend.
posted by tomwheeler at 10:32 PM on December 4, 2009

It is indeed a unison bend. It doesn't have to have distortion, though.
posted by ludwig_van at 10:40 PM on December 4, 2009

Nthing everybody else.

The ones at the end of Stairway To Heaven are pretty damn cool, too.
posted by Schlimmbesserung at 1:58 AM on December 5, 2009

Country musicians categorize this (and other such bends, pulls, and hammer-ons) generically as "steel licks." (Meaning that you are making a six-string sound like a pedal steel sliding into a chord.)
posted by fourcheesemac at 6:34 AM on December 5, 2009

I have heard of (strings bend + distortion = weird overtones) described as "heterodyning". This may be sprurious.
posted by ovvl at 10:17 AM on December 5, 2009