EMBELLISHMENTS

Playing the melody line is the essential job of the lead guitarist. But embellishments can easily and greatly improve the sound. This color-coded method is excellent for adding embellishments because you are playing by ear and have your full concentration on the melody. Here are favorite embellishments: Sliding up to the next note is the easiest embellishment. The hammer-down embellishment is done by fretting a string instantly after picking the string. A pull-off is performed by pulling your finger off the string after fretting and picking it. When sustaining a melody note, adding vibrato makes it sound professional. This is done by holding the fingertip on the string firmly and rolling your hand back and forth. Bending a note is used especially when playing the blues or at a sad word in the song. It is done easiest in the middle ranges of the strings of an acoustic guitar or anywhere with the lighter strings of an electric guitar. The technique is to use one or two fingers to shove the string upward toward your face. When sustaining a note, you can use a fill by playing another note or two to make it more interesting. Adding a harmonizing note to the lead note as an embellishment is twice as difficult as playing a single lead note, but it is twice as beautiful musically. Usually one uses the high E string for the melody note and the B string for the harmonizing note.

Here, to demonstrate embellishments, is Clarence “Frogman” Henry’s song, “But I Do”.  This rendition uses 18 embellishments including some listed above, plus sliding the chords of Am and D, talking instead of singing, finger runs, dropping the root of a minor chord in four steps, and concludes with an imitation of a string bass.