Tapped Phrases with Slides & Controlled Bends

Welcome back! In our previous lesson, we established a crucial link between your picking and tapping skills, focusing on how to switch between them seamlessly. You've practiced managing your pick and drilled exercises to integrate picked and tapped notes into a single line, opening the door to more textural variety.

Today, we will build directly on that foundation to integrate slides and controlled string bends within your tapped phrases for expressive articulation. This is where tapping transforms from a purely mechanical technique for playing fast notes into a tool for profound musical expression. By adding slides and bends initiated by either hand, you can give your tapped lines a fluid, vocal-like quality, mimicking the pitch-wheel effects of a synthesizer or the subtle nuances of the human voice. This is a hallmark of the modern guitar sound you're aiming for, used extensively by artists like Polyphia to create their signature synth-like lead melodies.

1. The Tapped Slide: Adding Fluid Motion

The most direct way to add movement to a tapped note is the tapped slide. The concept is simple: you tap a note with your picking hand and then, while maintaining pressure, slide that same finger up or down the string to a new pitch. This creates a perfectly smooth glissando that is difficult to achieve with other techniques.

The key to a clean tapped slide is control over the pressure of your tapping finger. The legendary guitarist Guthrie Govan explains this technique well in his "Tapper's Delight" lesson.

Now, let's put this into practice with a fundamental exercise.

Practice Exercise 1: Tapped Slide Basics

Set your metronome to a slow tempo, around 60 bpm. We'll work on the G string.

Part A: Ascending Slide

1. Tap the 14th fret with your picking-hand finger (either index or middle, depending on your pick management).
2. Without releasing pressure, immediately slide the tapping finger up to the 16th fret.
3. Pull-off to the 12th fret, which you should be fretting with your left hand.
4. Play this as a triplet (Tap-Slide-Pull) on each beat.

Part B: Descending Slide

1. Tap the 16th fret.
2. Immediately slide down to the 14th fret.
3. Pull-off to the 12th fret.

Focus on making the slide and the final pull-off sound connected and even in volume. The goal is a single, fluid motion.

2. The Tapped Bend: Combining Articulations

The tapped bend is a powerful expressive tool that involves coordinating a tap from your picking hand with a string bend from your fretting hand. This can be done in two primary ways:

1. Tapping a pre-bent note: Your fretting hand bends a note to pitch, and your picking hand taps a higher note on that same tensed string.
2. Bending a tapped note: Your picking hand taps a note, and your fretting hand then bends that note up to a new pitch.

Executing these requires careful muting and finger placement. The "Tapper's Delight" article again provides excellent guidance on tackling the first scenario.

To see these techniques in a clear, practical demonstration, the following video is invaluable.

Practice Exercise 2: Coordinated Bend and Tap

Let's drill the core mechanic of tapping a bent string. Keep the metronome at 60 bpm.

1. On the G string, fret the 12th fret with your left-hand ring finger.
2. Bend the string up a full step, so it sounds the pitch of the 14th fret. Use your middle and index fingers to support the bend and ensure it's accurately in tune.
3. While holding the bend securely, tap the 19th fret with your picking hand.
4. Pull-off from the tap back to the bent note at the 12th fret.
5. Release the bend back to the original 12th fret note.

Your primary focus here is intonation. The initial bend must be accurate, and the tapped note must ring out clearly.

3. Creating Vocal Phrases: The "Pitch Wheel" Effect

Now that you have the components, the final step is to combine them into musical phrases that sound less like a guitar and more like a synthesized lead or a human voice. This is achieved by weaving these articulations together to create continuous pitch modulation.

Guthrie Govan's masterclass on combining bending and tapping provides a perfect conceptual framework for this. He explicitly talks about using these techniques to emulate a keyboard's pitch wheel.

Let's create a final exercise that integrates all the elements from today's lesson into one comprehensive phrase.

Practice Exercise 3: The Integrated Articulation Phrase

This exercise is more complex and combines a tap, pull-off, bend, tapped slide, and a controlled bend release. Practice it slowly without a metronome at first to get the sequence into your muscle memory.

We'll work on the B string.

1. Tap the 17th fret.
2. Pull-off to the 13th fret (fretted with your left hand).
3. Immediately bend the 13th fret up a full step.
4. While holding the bend, tap the 17th fret again.
5. With the tap held down, slide your tapping finger from the 17th to the 19th fret.
6. Pull-off from the 19th fret back to the still-bent 13th fret.
7. Slowly and smoothly release the bend back to its original pitch.

This sequence creates a dynamic, vocal-like cry. The slow release at the end is a powerful expressive tool often used in modern guitar solos.

Conclusion

Today, you've added a deep layer of expressive potential to your tapping technique. By moving beyond static tapped notes, you've learned to infuse your playing with a sense of movement and articulation that is central to the modern guitar sound.

Key Takeaways:

• Tapped slides create a smooth glissando effect and require consistent finger pressure.
• Tapped bends involve intricate coordination between both hands, either by tapping a pre-bent string or by bending a note after it's been tapped.
• Combining these techniques allows you to create vocal-like or synth-like phrases, emulating pitch wheel effects and other expressive articulations.
• Mastery of these skills is not about speed but about control, intonation, and musicality.

In our next lesson, we will venture into true two-handed playing. You will learn to execute a two-hand tapping pattern with both hands in rhythmic unison on your 7-string guitar. This will leverage the right-hand dexterity you've been developing and open up a whole new world of contrapuntal and textural possibilities.