3 Reasons Why You Need A Whammy Bar

Don’t you sometimes wish your clean chords had a little more flare? Sure, jangling chord voicings have their place, but what about those times when you want a chord to hang in the air and make a statement?

Some light whammy bar work can really elevate even the most pedestrian of chord shapes and voicings. Striking a chord and then gently, and subtly depressing and releasing the bar, in quick succession, will add an immediate ambient quality to chords. Go ahead try this with a simple C chord in the open position and hear it shimmer!

Chords with open strings work particularly well so try a few barre chords and suspended chords with open strings included.

Want to go retro? Channel some surf guitar vibes by depressing the bar right after strumming the chord and bringing it back to pitch right away. Proceed sparingly with this one - it's a cool effect by can lose impact if overused!

Why vibrato the old fashioned way when you can vib with your bar! Now, I know, natural vibrato gives every guitarist their ‘signature’, but live a little! Mix things up with the whammy bar and add a little extra interest.

Applying vibrato with the whammy bar is the same, conceptually, as finger vibrato - it can be shallow or wide, fast or slow, so apply the same sensibilities to your whammy bar vibrato as you do your natural vibrato.

A basic bar vibrato can be achieved - as per our chord shimmers - by simply depressing the bar, very slightly, and returning it to its original pitch/position, then repeating, in tempo. With traditional vibrato, we can only really push and pull the note sharp. This is where the benefits of a bar come into play. Depressing the bar lowers the pitch of the note, whilst pulling up sharpens it. The effect is a beautiful, vocal like vibrato which oscillates either side of the fretted note, more akin to a singer’s vibrato.

Try this for yourself by striking a note, depressing the bar lightly, returning to the original pitch and then pulling up on the bar, being careful to sharpen the note by the same interval achieved when depressing it. Do this in a fluid motion and you’ll enter a whole new world of vibrato possibilities. Plus this will help sustain pitches for longer; perfect for the moments when you want to make a note sing!

Leave the dive bombs, gargles and animal noises at the door and adopt some more well-mannered, subtle tremolo techniques.

Pitch with the bar! This is an approach famously favoured by Jeff Beck. If the bar can raise or lower the pitch of any note, then why not aim for another note within the scale or key - much like a string bend. This does take some practice and control, but the pay off is worth it!

To try this out, strike a note and slide it two frets down. Memorise the sound and the drop in pitch. Now, play the first note again and try to achieve the lower note by depressing the bar and holding it in place when it has effectively dropped two frets in pitch. You can apply the same idea by pulling the bar up to achieve a note one or two frets higher (for those with floating trems!)

A ‘scoop’ is the ultimate in modern whammy bar expression and is a sure fire way of adding interest to even the most run-of-the-mill licks. This involves depressing the bar a little way before striking a note and then immediately bringing the bar up to pitch. The trick is to pre-depress the bar whist muting the strings, hitting the note and lifting the bar, and your muting hand simultaneously.