How to Play Guitar Vibrato With Your Fingers

A guitarist’s vibrato is a hallmark of his or her sound; it can range from subtle intonation adjustments to wide, authoritative statements. Learning to control and shape the vibration of your string while fretting with your fingers will give you a huge amount of expressive flexibility.

Most of us are familiar with the most common form of guitar vibrato, which consists of a back and forth movement of your string’s pitch, usually created by “pulling” the string across the fretboard (raising the string’s pitch) and then “pushing” the string down to the bridge (lowering the string’s pitch). Depending on what note you’re playing, this can produce a range of effects from subtle, intonation-adjustments to a broad, authoritative statement.

Often, as we create this vibrato with our finger, we will notice that our arm is also moving in a side-to-side motion as well. This is a good thing, as it helps to add more rhythmic movement to the vibrato and allows you to bend your string in and out of tune, if needed.

The only downside of this is that if you’re not careful, you can end up with too much “up and down” movement of your string, and this will cause the vibrato to become less controlled, more wobbly, and generally not as impressive to listen to. To avoid this, you should try to keep your arm movements strictly longitudinal (parallel to the string) and not transversal.

A good way to check if your arm movements are longitudinal is to place the thumb of your left hand against the neck, and then play a single note with your vibrato. If you hear your thumb pushing up and down against the strings, this is a bad sign – although it can work on certain styles of guitar if you think about it carefully, such as B.B. King’s style, and also the styles of many other players like Eric Clapton, Malmsteen, and Steve Vai.

It’s a good idea to focus your practice on the longitudinal arm movement for now, but also experiment with different types of finger-based vibrato as well. You should also try different ways of using the vibrato, such as varying the frequency and depth of the vibrato, as you will find that some strings respond better to certain methods than others.

Finally, it’s worth noting that while some skills can be learned with lots of small daily repetitions, other skills require a bigger push (such as three hours a day for a week or so) to make significant progress. This is the case with guitar vibrato, and getting a really nice, tight, wide vibrato that sounds great requires a lot of time and patience to develop. However, once you get it down, it will be a valuable tool in your guitar arsenal for years to come. Good luck!