Guitar Phrasing Techniques #1: How to Vibrato

After having played lead guitar on stage, and screwing up quite a few times, I’ve learned some tricks along the way to make my guitar sound better.

When playing a guitar solo, we might ask: why don’t I sound like the original?

There may be several answers to this question: guitar tone is different, amp settings are different, but one answer I find is most applicable, and that is phrasing.

Phrasing simply refers to how you present your notes on a guitar. There are many ways to phrase notes, but at length, I will start this phrasing series with vibrato (if I add more techniques, this article will be too long).

How you present your notes on the guitar is very crucial to making your performance sound beautiful and engaging. Your sense of dynamics can really impress guitarists in the crowd, too!

There is A LOT to doing a proper vibrato, so I’ll add what I know to this blog here. You can refer back to this blog like a manual.

Vibrato: what is it?

Vibrato is simply the oscillation between two pitches. Imagine an opera singer hitting their last note. There is always a deep vibrato worked into the note, where the note slightly oscillates up and down between a note.

If you search “good vibrato” on Google, one of the first resources discusses singing vibrato. According to singbetter.net, it is recommended to oscillate around 6 times per second for a good vibrato.

For guitar players, I want to add to more to this.

Without a whammy bar, a guitar’s vibrato is basically limited to playing pitches above the fretted note. Singers can hit a vibrato that oscillates above and below the pitch being sung, but most guitars don’t.

What’s a Good Vibrato?

To hit a decent vibrato on the guitar, try playing with a good guitar tuner. A slight bend up or down should make the note very slightly out of tune (a few ticks on a digital tuner, or a few Hz on a smartphone tuner).

A good vibrato should be even and slight, meaning when bending the string up/down slightly, it should hit the same higher pitch each time. The note shouldn’t be too noticeably bent out of tune. That is a more extreme vibrato, which should be used sparingly to add intensity to your play.

If you’re hitting a quarter tone up (meaning between the note you’re playing and the note/semitone pitch above it), that is too much vibrato.

One example of extreme vibrato comes from the song “For the Love of God” by Steve Vai. He mixes his vibrato by using his whammy bar, then using a more extreme vibrato bend. All of that is intentional in his music.

He is a phrasing monster, after all. Steve Vai is an incredible guitar player to learn more about electric guitar phrasing!

Use more extreme vibrato for intensity, and more subtle vibrato for subtlety.

Timing your Vibrato

When listening to a player like Slash, he takes subtleties to another level. As a guitarist, I believe he is not overrated at all. His guitar cadence is awesome, bends are incredibly well-timed and full of feel, legato is tight, and his vibrato is always timed according to the song.

What does it mean to time your vibrato?

Well, let’s say we play a slow blues jam. Instead of hitting the suggested 6 oscillations per second, we can try 3–4 oscillations per second (for you metronome/tempo freaks, that’s more suitable for <60 bpm Largo tempo, or under).

Slower vibrato eases the listener into the song, rather than take over the song, since the vibrato matches the song’s cadence.

Practice doing a slow vs fast vibrato. Make a mental note of when you’d use either (slow for ballads, fast for speed metal, etc.)

How to Do an Proper, Clean Vibrato

There are a few ways to play vibrato, which include: oscillating the string upward only, oscillating the string down only, and oscillating the string in both directions.

Practice landing your fingers on the string and note where you want to use a vibrato.

• Make sure it feels easy for you to press the string against the fret board, not too hard but hard enough to avoid buzzing, and move the string up and down against the fret. Both directions should be easy.
• If it feels difficult to oscillate the string in one direction (up or down), simply let go, and re-land your finger on the string again until it feels easy. Repeat that a few times and practice regularly.

For starters, any finger can do a vibrato on a string, but some are more suitable than others.

• I typically use one of three fingers (index, middle, ring), but for starters, use the ring finger. The reason is a vibrato can result in excess noise if the player touches the strings above/below the string being played.

Excess Noise

Sometimes when I hear a YouTuber play guitar, I’ll notice too much excess noise in their vibrato; other strings ring, other strings are moving and sliding around, and it might sound a little jarring.

To avoid unwanted/excess noise that come from the other strings, here are some tips:

• Make sure all you hear is the one note being played.
• Use the space you have on the fret board. For example, when I do a vibrato on the high e string, I can only bend the string up on most guitars because that’s all the space I have. I might touch the B string above it and make excess unwanted noise.
• In the point above, I prefer muting the string above by lightly touching and muting the B string with my index/middle finger, while I do a vibrato with my ring finger.
• Simply use the other fingers to touch and mute the closest strings that are not being played (don’t press the other strings; simply touch and hold your finger on them so notes don’t ring out). That way, your vibrato will sound cleaner.
• If you’re skilled enough, you can also use your picking hand to mute the notes above/below the string you are playing.

Here’s one example to illustrate how I do a clean vibrato: if I am doing a vibrato on the D string, I’d use the index finger on my fretting hand to mute the A string, and I can flatten my fretting hand against the strings below to mute those as well (which is actually easier for me).

Here’s how it would typically look like:

Notice the index finger against the A string. The fretting hand has a flat profile, helping to mute the strings below. With this form, I can do a vibrato cleanly.

When to Use Vibrato

Here are a couple of bullet points to help guide players in using vibrato at the right time:

• Long notes: when there is a note that seems to last a while, throw vibrato on it.
• At the end of a passage: when you do a move and there is a break incoming, sneak a good vibrato in.
• When the phrasing is lacking: if there haven’t been much phrasing in the piece thus far, try adding a vibrato to add some spice to it.
• At the end of a slide or bend: if a note is played for a longer length of time after a slide/bend, try and use the vibrato as a nice finishing touch.
• To add emotion: listen to the first few notes of Jason Becker’s guitar in the song “Altitudes”. He adds vibrato to many longer notes to add some emotion to the presentation.

With all that said, here are the key takeaways for the TLDR crowd:

• Practice vibrato with a guitar tuner on.
• Oscillation of the string should be even and slight; it shouldn’t bend the note off tune too much.
• Time the vibrato according to the cadence of the song; if the song is fast, use a faster vibrato. If the song is slow, slow the vibrato down.
• Make sure it feels easy for you to press the string against the fret board and move the string up and down against the fret.
• There are 3 primary movements to do a vibrato without a whammy bar: upward oscillation, downward oscillation, and bi-directional (moving the string up and down). Make sure to play the vibrato evenly.
• For starters, do vibratos with the ring finger. Try doing vibratos with other fingers once you got the ring finger down.
• Mute unwanted/excess noise; mute the other proximal strings with your free fretting fingers, or if skilled enough, your picking hand/fingers.
• Use a vibrato to add phrasing to longer notes, to the end of a sequence, to a passage where phrasing is lacking, or to add emotion.

That’s all, folks. Keep filling the world with good music. We all need it.

See you in the next blog!