Pitch — Post-Prog-Metal

Pitch (15)

Bend, up into the note The target pitch is approached from below rather than struck directly.

every important note bent up into from below rather than struck cleanly, so the pitch arrives rather than appears

Pre-bend The string is bent before being struck, then released down to pitch.

notes that start sharp and fall into tune as they sound

Oblique bend One string bent while an adjacent string is held at fixed pitch, producing a moving interval.

two notes sounding together where one slides in pitch and the other stays fixed, the interval opening or closing

Unison bend A fretted note bent up to match an already-sounding note, passing through the beating region.

two versions of the same note sounding together, one bending into tune with the other and beating audibly on the way

Blue note region (microtonal third) Measured cluster analysis places the blue third near 316–319 cents and the blue fifth near 582 cents — regions bent through, not fixed pitches.

thirds and fifths that sit deliberately between the major and minor, bent through rather than landed on

Quarter-tone bend A bend of roughly a quarter tone, used in blues and as a guitar approximation of maqam intervals.

notes bent only a fraction of a semitone, sitting audibly between two frets

Meend A continuous glide between pitches, idiomatic on slide because the bar never leaves the string.

every note connected to the next by a continuous slide with no discrete steps, the pitch never jumping

Gamaka An umbrella of pitch ornaments — oscillation, glide, shake — more central to Carnatic theory than Hindustani.

notes constantly ornamented with oscillations and shakes rather than held steady

Circular vibrato A circular fingertip motion combining the rock up-bend and the classical side-to-side, taking the note both sharp and flat.

wide vibrato that goes both above and below the pitch rather than only sharp, deliberately unstable

Classical vibrato Side-to-side motion along the string axis, narrower and centred.

narrow, even, perfectly centred vibrato that never pushes the pitch sharp

Whammy dive The bar is depressed to drop pitch, sometimes to slack.

pitch dropped by the tremolo arm in a long fall, sometimes all the way to a slack rattle

Whammy flutter (gargle) The bar is struck or released and allowed to oscillate freely.

a fluttering warbling pitch wobble from the tremolo arm bouncing after release

Behind-the-nut bend The string is pushed behind the nut, raising pitch on an open string.

open strings bent upward in pitch without being fretted

B-bender (StringBender) A strap-driven lever bends the B string a whole tone from behind the bridge while both hands keep playing.

one note inside a held chord sliding up a whole tone by itself while the other notes stay put, like a pedal steel

Slide vibrato Oscillation of the bar itself around the target pitch, the pitch never fixed.

vibrato produced by rocking a slide back and forth over the note, wide and vocal