Guitar technique
A bend is a guitar technique where you push or pull a string sideways across the fret to raise the pitch without moving your finger to a new fret.
Free for the first 3 songs.
What it is
Bends are how guitar produces the expressive vocal-like quality that defines blues, rock, and country lead playing. A full-step bend raises the pitch by two frets worth of pitch, a half-step bend by one, and a quarter-step bend produces the bluesy in-between notes that don't exist on a piano. Bend amount, attack speed, and release timing all carry musical meaning and are part of what makes one player's vibrato and bending sound different from another's.
How to read it
In standard guitar tab, bends are written with a 'b' or an upward arrow after the fret number, often with the target pitch in parentheses: 7b9 means bend the 7th fret note up to sound the same as the 9th fret. Half bends use 'b' alone; full bends are sometimes written 'bf'; pre-bends start with the string already bent then attacked.
See the full guide to reading guitar tab for the complete symbol reference, or browse the glossary for related terminology.
How audio2guitar detects it
Bend detection requires per-frame pitch tracking, not just note onset detection. The audio2guitar pipeline tracks instantaneous fundamental frequency through each sustained note and identifies bends when the pitch drifts smoothly above the resting frequency. Bend amount is computed in cents and snapped to the nearest quarter, half, or whole step.
Where it shows up
Yes. The tab marks the bend amount (half-step, full-step, or 1.5 step) and indicates whether the bend is held, released, or pre-bent.
Yes. Quarter-step bends are notated explicitly because they're musically distinct in blues playing.
Every bends our pipeline detects gets marked in the tab automatically. First 3 songs free.