I think it’s always going to be more work than on the 2nd and 3rd string. There’s G.Govan’s bending masterclass on youtube and on his first video he’ll play around bending up to 3.5 tones I believe but he didn’t do all those extreme bends on the high e string, I think even he will recognise the limits of the strings.
It’s worth trying on a different guitar just to confirm your suspicions. Just don’t hurt yourself.
I suppose you’re right but I always thought the distance between notes after the 12th fret is shorter and I feel the bending distance is shorter, too, but I may be playing this by ear so don’t quote me.
The high E diggs into my fingers more because it’s so thin.
I find it’s easier to bend on my guitar with 11s. I assume it’s due to the pressure being more evenly distributed.
I also think that theres little room for adjustment with the high E because it’s right near the edge and if you fiddle to much to get a better grip it can slide off the fret. Also because theres not much fretboard behind the fingers you have to come at it at a steeper angle. Where as most the others you can get far more horizontal in angle.
Just trying to bend the other strings with a steep or more vertical angle also feels akward. So I think that might be the main issue?
I think if you’re having trouble, it’s likely more to do with this than other factors. It probably means you don’t get to push the string with the same area of your fingertip that you do for other strings.
And the distance from the string to the edge of the fingerboard isn’t necessarily the same with every guitar design. And occasionaly, small variances in manufacturing can result in either the bridge not being ideally positioned, or the neck not being aligned perfectly in the neck pocket. I know I’ve picked up some guitars in a music store that had less fretboard “margin” than others.
The first thing I do when I try out a guitar I’m thinking about buying is put it under my chin like a violin (not completely literally, but that gives you the basic idea) to see how the strings and the edges of the fingerboard line up.
Position of the nut or the nut slots could be another variable, but it seems like that would be harder to get wrong unless somebody is cutting the nut slots by hand.
In any event, on a guitar you own, you could experiment with either slightly changing the position of the nut, or using a narrower-spaced nut to see if that makes you happier. Some bridges allow you to adjust the spacing at the bridge, but I think most of them have the saddles lined up in “grooves” now. Depending on the bridge design, it might be reasonable to swap in another bridge with narrower spacing.
Before modding your gutiar, the simple non-pandemic way to test whether some guitars bend easier for you than others would be to go to a music store and try doing bends on a bunch of different guitars to see if you have the same difficulty on all of them. String gauge is a potential variable there too (though I think 9s are pretty standard on strat-like guitars at least), but you should also be able to visually inspect the amount of fingerboard margin.
Abstract:
The physics seems pretty straightforward to me.
Analysis:
The tension of a guitar string is a function of length L (inches), weight per linear distance W (lbs/inch), and frequency (Hz): T = 4*W*L^2*F^2/386.4 = S*F^2, with S being roughly constant for a given string and fret [1]. (I’ll ignore the small change in length that comes from bending and fretting, and focus on tension as the dominant variable.) Then the force required for bending is dT = 2T*dF/F. Since dF = F*(2^(n/12) - 1) for bends of n half-steps, we get dT = 2T*(2^(n/12) - 1), meaning that the force required to bend a given interval is proportional to the tension of the unbent string. I don’t think the bending distance (lateral deviation of the string) matters too much as far as effort is concerned.
The tension of each string is often published by the manufacturers. A quick scan of several manufacturers’ tables for various gauges [2,3,4,5] indicates that there are no hard and fast rules about which strings have the highest tension, but D’Addario EXL120’s at 25.5" and standard tuning look like this:
The force felt on the fingertips is just the along-string component of dT, so 2*dT*sin(alpha) where alpha is the angle in radians between the bent and unbent string. The factor of two is because we are increasing the tension on both sides of the string (11th fret to nut and 12th fret to bridge) and those two lengths are almost equal.
When we move away from the 12th fret, our approximation for the force felt on our fingertips becomes dT*(alpha + tan(beta)). When we’re close to the nut, the angle at the nut end (beta) is larger than alpha and the tangent term dominates. Closer to the bridge, the opposite is true. So jlopez is correct, the higher up the neck you go, the less force is required for the same amount of pitch change. This effect is pretty consistent across strings. So it remains true that the amount of force required to bend a string is proportional to the unbent tension of the string.
We’re assuming a double-locking nut for simplicity. If the nut or bridge allows the string to slide, then the distance required for bending to a given pitch will increase, though the force won’t be too affected, and our results will still hold.
Discussion:
While it’s true in these results that the high-E string does take more force to bend than the B-string, the G-string takes even more force, and the lower strings take even more than that, since it’s all just dependent on the unbent tension, but I always find that the thicker strings give much more pitch response for a given amount of bending ‘effort’. I assume this is because thicker strings give lower pressure due to greater surface area contact with your fingertip. There also may be a psychological effect: thicker strings seem to sustain longer and I think I end up squeezing thinner strings harder when I bend in a misguided attempt to get more sustain from them. I also tend to agree with the leverage arguments mentioned above. Technique seems to matter, too. Bending with forearm rotation rather than finger extension makes a lot of difference in terms of how hard it feels like I’m working for a bend.
Also, if you can bend hard enough to break your strings, then it doesn’t seem like force is the limiting factor.
Conclusion:
None to speak of. The reason bending is harder at low frets is explained, but the reason the high E string feels more difficult to bend is still just a guess. This was fun, though.
Amazing level of detail in that answer, mate, thanks for the input. But to the layman the word straightforward has a different meaning!
This may well be true on paper but I can easily bend the G-string 1.5 tones or more without as much effort or fear of breaking the string. So tension might be a smaller factor than we give it credit for.
Not sure how helpful I can be but here’s my experience… back when I was into SRV there was a tune where I broke a few high E strings on the same lick at the fret on the same day! I think by the 4th string the issue went away, this was a while ago but I suspect I changed my technique from holding the sting down and sliding to just pushing the string up from under. Now I’m on a YJM strat and the scallops make it a non-issue, but again with the scallops, it’s even easier to apply more pressure along the fret then down onto the fret, granted at all times I’ve tuned a half step down. I’m travelling and don’t have my guitars with me, so this is really me just thinking about it.
Think it’s just judo, apply pressure at the right points
edit: and vector I should say!
This is interesting, I’ve noticed I often bend and even vibrato with my thumb not touching the neck. I guess I’m using more forearm rotation (edit: more of an up and down motion than rotation) ! Never thought about it, but I suspected it’s something I had to look into eventually. Great post!
I’ve broken a couple of strings by pinching the string against the edge of a fret while bending. Apparently it’s quite usual to pull down the string a bit right before the bend comes and it is possible this is responsible for a lot of the breaks.
Cool replies all! I never realised how scalloped frets could allow you to get the fingers in a better position for pushing/pulling the string. Makes sense!
Also @jllopez you were totally right, bending feels easier in the higher frets (beyond the 12th). So my initial theory (just looking at string length on both sides) was definitely wrong / oversimplified.
This is an interesting question @Pepepicks66! I paid more attention to it and the real problem is not the force I need to apply, but the fact that I feel like my nails start to want to separate from the skin of the finger - if that makes sense? Again, with 1-tone bends this is only a problem on the high E.
The angle with which my fingers approach the string may definitely be a factor!
Yep, high-E is hard to bend for me. In most data I’ve seen E and G strings have more or less similar tension (B-string usually has lower tension). which is interesting.
I’ve just tried to do a whole tone bend on both strings, and results are as follows:
on a G string I have to move it ~0.5 inch
on a E string I have to move it almost 1 inch.
Basically, the angle neccesary to change the pitch depends on many factors, such as tesnion force, Young’s modulus, and cross-section etc. While tension force and Young’s modulus for E and G strings are more or less similar, cross sections are not.
Let’s take a simple formula:
cos phi ≈ (Tk^2 - EA) / (T - EA),
where phi - angle neccesary to make a bend,
T - tension force,
E - Young’s modulus for a string
A - string crosssection
k - koefficient of frequency change (≈1.122 times for a wholetone)
I use 0.009 vs 0.016 strings as reference string diameters. I assumed tension and Young’s modulus for both strings similar (60N and 170GPa respectively).
For this data I get angles ~3.8° and ~2.2°, i.e. E-string requires more angle to achieve the same bending (theoretically). For a 650mm guitar scale-length it gives us:
325tan(3.8) ≈ 21.6mm shift
325tan(2.2) ≈ 12.5mm shift.
(325mm for a 12th fret which is half of scale-length)
Though I used a lot of simplifications the result is in agreement with my experiment and my overall feelings ))
Stauffer (Texas Blues Alley - great site) has a video on how he sets the action on his guitars specifically with bending in mind; he starts with getting that high E at a bendable height.
I think I have an intuitive way to think about this. If you only analyze the part of the string between the fret and the bridge, the increase in tension required to bend a string to pitch is independent of the fret. But you are of course simultaneously increasing the tension of the portion of the string between the fret and the nut, which requires effort proportional to the change in pitch of that side of the string. The closer you get to the nut, the higher the pitch change of the nut-side of the string, and thus the greater amount of force required. Around the 12th fret, the pitch change of both sides will be roughly equal (the precise location depends on how you grip the string: how many fingers, how spread out, etc. For a two-finger bend with one fret per finger, this would happen at fret 13). At lower frets you are bending the nut-side more than the bridge-side, and at higher frets you are bending the bridge-side more than the nut-side.
Intuitively, it seems like the middle of the string should be the easiest place to bend, maybe because of the symmetry between the nut-side and the bridge-side of the string. But the physics isn’t actually symmetric because we only care about the pitch of the bridge-side. The comparative change of the pitch on the nut-side decreases as you go up the neck, which means the effort required also decreases.
This is explained in my previous answer, but the intuition of it probably gets lost in the trigonometry.
My initial thought was that the bending distance didn’t matter as long as the force was roughly the same because I was considering each string in isolation. But I think you’re right, the bending distance does matter because we usually end up bending more than one string at a time. I now think that this is the true answer to the question. The high E-string is harder to bend to pitch because it has to be pushed further than the other strings, which means we end up inadvertently bending the next string as well, which increases the load.
For example: for a 1 step-bend on the E-string at the 12th fret, we will also have to provide enough additional force to also bend the B-string by (let’s say) a half-step. But if we try to bend the B-string at the 12th fret, we only have to provide enough additional force to bend the G-string by maybe 1/4 or 1/8 of a step. For larger bends, you end up bending 3 or more strings, which increases the load discrepancy even more.
I’m not totally certain without some experimental proof, but I feel pretty confident that this is actually the dominant reason that bending on the high E string feels harder than the other strings.
How do you bend? Do you use the adjacent fingers as support? This will immensely help with bending. Are you bending from the wrist or fingers? Do you use the middle and index to help the ring finger when bending by being down on the string behind the fretting note finger?
Just for reference I took two “selfies” of myself bending the high E by a whole step (hammered on from nowhere then bent to pitch while holding the phone - the string displacement should be correct)
Edit: i can definitely notice the effect that @induction mentioned - you can see that to reach the whole step I am also bending the B string by a significant amount (if I play it it almost reaches the whole step itself), and the g string by a non negligible amount.
I checked, and at the 12th fret when I bend the high E by 1 tone, also the B is bent by one tone. Playing the two together sounds like an almost perfect 4th.
You can see quite clearly a whitening of the nail of the ring finger. If I go further (like a 1.5 tone bend), I get the definite and uncomfortable feeling that the tip of the nail wants to detach from the finger:
Edit: the “nail wanting to detach” thing could be overcome by grabbing the string with a “flatter” finger, so that the fingertip gets pushed against the nail instead of away from it. I haven’t found a way to do that though. Maybe this is where the scalloped frets help?
Something odd there maybe. I don’t think your support fingers should be higher than the freted note finger, either that or they’re not giving u enought support. The string should have only one vertex if that makes any sense.
Edit: the other support fingers follow but in an angle, I’m overthinking this
Edit2: yup, the b string at the circled note should meet at the fretted note on the same feet, not the middle finger note.
