Acoustic bass guitar of acoustic bass guitars. The bajo sexto, with six pairs of strings, resembles a twelve-string guitar tuned an octave lower. The heavy gauge strings generate a large string tension, yet the guitar is built relatively lightly. Musicians began to use the bajo sexto in Texas in the 1920s with the rise of "Tex-Mex" music, and remains in common use to play parts that would be played by the piano in traditional American popular music. It matches the standard tuning of a 12-string guitar, one octave lower. The tuning of these instruments is (capital letters are an octave lower than small
String bending String bending String bending is a guitar technique where fretted strings are displaced by application of a force by the fretting fingers in a direction perpendicular to their vibrating length. This has the net effect of increasing the pitch of a note. String-bending allows exploration of microtonality and can be used to give a distinctive vocal articulation to lead guitar passages. String bending is executed by fretting a note on the guitar fretboard, and then applying a force perpendicular to the length of the fretboard with the fretting hand, displacing the string from its resting vibrating position. This yields a