Unit 1: Rock Vibrato

What Is Vibrato?

Any good air guitar player knows about vibrato - it is when a guitarist wiggles his wrist to make the note sound ‘wobbly’! Vibrato is a crucial technique that helps soften and give real character to your lead guitar playing. Vibrato is essentially varying the pitch of a note by quickly bending it out of tune, then quickly back in tune, repeatedly. Here is what vibrato looks like in tab:

When it comes to actually perform the vibrato, here is a useful little checklist to help:

1. Use your third finger to start with, place it on the note (7th fret G string)
2. Position your 1st & 2nd fingers on the same string behind your 3rd finger
3. Pick the note to make sure it is ringing out properly
4. Whilst keeping the note sounding, push the string down very slowly
5. Quickly return to the original note. You then repeat steps 4 & 5 over and over again!

Vibrato Solo

Let’s put our new skills into practice with this cool vibrato solo. The idea here is to play something relatively simple, but use the vibrato to really make it sing! Notice in the video how I always hit the note to hear the pitch, then add the vibrato. It’s subtle but it makes a big difference. Firstly, the solo is in the key of B minor using our pentatonic shape 1 and some of the next shape along. We will include the notes on the fretboard in the fretboard diagrams, but we go through them in detail in the next course, so don't worry about it for now!

In the tab section, you will the entire solo tab. For now, you only need to cover the first few licks as shown in the video. Be sure to get them learnt before continuing to the next lesson.

Scale Vibrato

Let’s get some good, solid vibrato practice under our belts! This is a simple exercise, but it is very hard to make it sound good, so take your time. The idea is simple, take pentatonic shape one in A minor and play vibrato on every single note. You will find the tab further down the page, and in the fretboard diagrams is a reminder of the pentatonic shape 1 in A minor.

Vibrato Solo Part 2

We will now complete the solo by adding the final licks and putting them together. You can now use the whole of the tab to help you.

Adding Vibrato

As a last point in this vibrato course, we just wanted to say that vibrato should not be overused! Whilst you are learning to use vibrato, I will be asking you to use it all the time so that you learn how to use it properly. However, when you get to the point where you are able to play vibrato, remember to only use it when necessary and not all the time! For now though, be sure to practise it as often as you like.