Hey,
There's an article called "Mastering Vibrato". I agree with some of what I've read, but not everything. If the section under "here's some advice" is aimed toward the novice, that's one thing, but I can't agree with a couple of them:
"2. Use your middle finger only to do vibrato, because it is the strongest finger, and gets the other fingers out of your way."
Unless this is aimed at beginner's, I find this extremely short sited. Why wouldn't you used ALL fingers to do vibrato? I do agree that vibrato adds "flavor to your playing", by using more than one finger,you'll get a variety of strengths and weaknesses by using different fingers at different times.
"3. On all of the guitar strings, minus the High E string, bend the note towards the ground, instead of pushing it up to you. This makes good use of gravity in conjunction with the strength of the middle finger."
Like the article in the link provided at the end of this article, I agree with Jeff Treadwell in that I usually use up vibrato on the high E, B and D strings, and down on the rest. If you used down vibrato on the B string and wanted to do a pentatonic bend, let's say 5th fret to 8th fret, you stand a pretty good chance of fretting out on that bend.
I am not sure what Jeff meant by saying "The most common error players make when performing vibrato is that they do it way to narrow, and way to fast. When people do vibrato that way it sounds incredibly annoying." I'd like to know what this sounds like. I clicked on the link to have samples of vibtrato mailed to me, but there was nowhere on that page to click to have them sent. Fast finger vibrato is hard to do, it takes a lot of control.
Lastly, what I find sad is guitar players that grab the whammy bar every time they want to do vibrato! If they'd uust some time in and get the finger vibrato down...they might stay in tune!
respectfully, J.P.