BENDOLOGY…

Some aspects of electric guitar playing are so totally established as orthodoxy that they seem almost immune to change: standard tuning is a de facto, er, standard; open chords, powerchords and ‘blues box’ scale shapes too. Like a goldfish and the water it lives in, we don’t really question their existence.

So it came as a bit of a shock to some in August 2021 when Polyphia’s Tim Henson innocently related to music YouTuber Rick Beato that he rejects conventional string bending techniques of the ‘Boomer’ generation “because it’s gonna sound like that era”. Henson intended no disrespect (he actually paid homage to his heroes Jimi Hendrix and Black Sabbath) but in a conversation ostensibly about ‘modern’ guitar, Tim made it clear that he’s most interested in new approaches and techniques.

Here at TG we saw in this the opportunity to learn something new about guitar playing. So read on