Guitar Unison Bends

• Oct 14, 2020 - 21:06

I'm in the process of transcribing some music from Ultimate Guitar, melding the contents of two tabs which are both not quite perfect, so I can have an easily-accessible backing track to practice along to. There are unison bends in the song*, and I was wondering if there is a way to make these work in Musescore3. When I applied the bend to the double stops, both notes were bent. I tried putting the notes in separate voices to see if i could apply the bend to one, but not the other, but that didn't work either.

Not really a dealbreaker if I can't make it work, but I was just curious.

* See attached @ Lead Guitar II, ms. 73

Attachment Size
Bat_Country_w_vocals.mscz 53.12 KB

Comments

So I did some poking around, and apparently I was notating them wrong -- it should be a grace note bent into the principal pitch. But when I apply the bend to the grace note, which approaches from a whole step below, it plays the grace note, a C, skips up to an E, and then plays the principal D. What's going on?

Hi, wish I could help but have you found an answer to this? I'm trying to write out some double-stop countryish guitar exercises where one note of the double-stop is bent. I also tried separate voices and got both notes bending. Plus since the goal is to create tabs for people who don't read standard notation, I need to be clear in the tab that only one string is being bent.

You wrote:
When I applied the bend to the double stops, both notes were bent.

Yes, so you can create a hidden staff with only the lower note bent into the unison.
Panning and volume settings should be the same for each so the two played together will sound like one instrument.

Have a listen to measures 73 - 76:
Bat_Country_w_vocals2.mscz

Here's an explanation:
Unison bends.mscz

BTW: In your posted score there are 2 identical phrases with bends. The third bend in both is attached to the upper note instead of the lower note. It is the lower note that gets bent - to sound like a unison to the upper note.

In reply to by Jm6stringer

Thanks! I wasn't the OP who posted a file, but I'll definitely check out your method. I'm not looking for bends into unison, but something like the classic "fake pedal steel" riff... e.g. a double-stop that starts as a fourth, but where the lower note bends up a whole step.

Thanks again.

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