Vibrato is one of the single most important techniques to give your lead guitar playing a more professional sound. Vibrato is a slight fluctuation in pitch, that gives more depth and sustain to a note. Vibrato creates a more "vocal" sound in your playing. Before talking more in-depth about how vibrato is done, listen to the 2 examples below. Can you hear how the same notes can have a very different feel when vibrato is used?

without vibrato (11K) get realplayer

with vibrato (11K) get realplayer

Vibrato is sometimes confused with tremolo, which is a slight fluctuation in volume. (I created this effect with software, but you could use and effects pedal or even turn your volume knob up and down.

with tremolo (26K) get realplayer

The first vibrato that you are going to do is on and unbent note. More on bends with vibrato later. You may want to take a look at the lesson on bending technique, since the finger movements for vibrato is similar.

All of the examples are going to be played on the 3rd string, 7th fret. A squiggley line is sometimes placed above the notes that vibrato is going to be applied. It is impossible to notate vibrato exactly. Vibrato is most of the time just done at the discretion of the player, on notes that are held for a longer period of time.

You are going to be playing a note, bending the pitch up slightly, and then letting the note back down to the original pitch. This is repeated at a constant rate to create vibrato.

Page 2, Vibrato, how to do it

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