Читать книгу Blues Guitar For Dummies - Jon Chappell - Страница 46

Many people think that the only difference between electric guitars and acoustic guitars is that the electric versions plug into an amp and are louder. While that’s true, it’s not the only difference. As a player, what you notice as soon as you pick up an electric guitar is how easy it is to play. As far as physical effort is concerned, electric guitars are much easier because

 The neck is shallower.

 The fingerboard width is thinner.

 The strings are lighter than those found on an acoustic.

 The action, or distance from the strings to the frets, is lower, so it frets almost effortlessly.

But the lighter strings have another advantage crucial to blues playing, other than being easier to play: They’re easier to bend.

Bending strings allows electric guitarists to be more expressive in their lead playing, and to allow the guitar to better emulate the vocal stylings of blues singers, who used their flexible approach to pitch to play blues notes. Figure 2-6 shows what it looks like to bend a string on an electric. The string is physically pushed sideways on the fretboard by the left hand, stretching it.

FIGURE 2-6: A left-hand string bend stretches the string, causing it to rise in pitch.