Dive bomb is a guitar technique in which the tremolo bar is used to rapidly lower the pitch

Pitch (music)

Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...

 of a note, creating a sound considered to be similar to a bomb dropping. One of the most recognized pioneers of this technique is Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...

. Other notable musicians who are widely known for using this technique are Slash

Slash (musician)

Saul Hudson , known by his stage name Slash, is a British-American musician and songwriter. He is best known as the former lead guitarist of the American hard rock band Guns N' Roses, with whom he achieved worldwide success in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During his later years with Guns N'...

, Brian May

Brian May

Brian Harold May, CBE is an English musician and astrophysicist most widely known as the guitarist and a songwriter of the rock band Queen...

, Eddie Van Halen

Eddie Van Halen

Edward Lodewijk "Eddie" Van Halen is a Dutch-American guitarist, keyboardist, songwriter and producer, best known as the lead guitarist and co-founder of the hard rock band Van Halen, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame...

, Kirk Hammett

Kirk Hammett

Kirk Lee Hammett is the lead guitarist and a songwriter in the heavy metal band Metallica and has been a member of the band since 1983. Before joining Metallica he formed and named the band Exodus. In 2003, Hammett was ranked 11th on Rolling Stones list of The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time...

, Uli Jon Roth, K.K. Downing, Glenn Tipton

Glenn Tipton

Glenn Tipton is one of the Grammy Award-winning guitarists for the heavy metal band Judas Priest...

, Joe Satriani

Joe Satriani

Joseph "Joe" Satriani is an American instrumental rock guitarist and multi-instrumentalist, with multiple Grammy Award nominations...

, Herman Li

Herman Li

Herman Li is a British Chinese musician, best known as a guitarist for the power metal band DragonForce.-Playing style:Li draws influences from rock, all sub-genres of metal as well as video game music and often mimics sounds from popular retro games from the late 80s, early-90s arcade, and PC games...

, Dimebag Darrell

Dimebag Darrell

Darrell Lance Abbott , also known as Diamond Darrell and Dimebag Darrell, was an American guitarist. He was best known as a founding member of the heavy metal bands Pantera and Damageplan. Abbott also contributed to the album Rebel Meets Rebel, a collaboration between Pantera and David Allan Coe...

, Synyster Gates

Synyster Gates

Brian Elwin Haner, Jr. , better known by his stage name Synyster Gates or simply Syn, is an American musician, best known for being the lead guitarist of the American heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold.-Early life:...

, Pat O'Brien

Pat O'Brien (guitarist)

Pat O'Brien is the lead guitarist for the death metal band Cannibal Corpse. He was born in Northern Kentucky. He graduated from Conner High School in Hebron, Kentucky in 1983. He currently resides in Florida and is a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. He owns a collection of guns...

, Alexi Laiho

Alexi Laiho

Alexi "Wildchild" Laiho is a Finnish singer, composer, and guitarist. He is best known for being the lead guitarist as well as lead vocalist for melodic death metal band Children of Bodom, and he is also the guitarist for Sinergy and Kylähullut...

, Mick Mars

Mick Mars

Mick Mars is the lead guitarist for American heavy metal band Mötley Crüe.-Career:After his family relocated from Indiana, to California, Bob Deal dropped out of high school and began playing guitar in a series of unsuccessful blues based rock bands throughout the seventies, taking on menial day...

, Kerry King

Kerry King

Kerry King is an American lead and rhythm guitarist. He is best known as the lead guitarist and cofounder of American thrash metal band Slayer. He co-founded the band with Jeff Hanneman in 1981 and has been a member ever since...

, and Tyler Rebmann. Some guitarists, such as K.K. Downing and Dimebag Darrell have been known to use a variation of this technique in which a harmonic, most commonly a pinch harmonic

Pinch harmonic

A pinch harmonic or pick harmonic is a guitar technique in which the player's thumb or index finger on the picking hand slightly catches the string after it is picked, canceling the fundamental of the string, and letting one of the overtones dominate. This results in a high pitched sound...

, is used instead of a normal fretted or open note creating a sound arguably closer to that of a bomb due to the squealing sound created by the harmonic.

It is usually best performed when using a locking tremolo (whammy bar) such as the Floyd Rose

Floyd Rose

The Floyd Rose Locking Tremolo, or simply Floyd Rose, is a type of locking vibrato arm for a guitar. The first of its kind, Floyd D. Rose invented the locking vibrato in 1977, and it is now manufactured by a company of the same name...

version, so that rapid changes in string tension do not take the strings out of tune. This allows the guitarist to pick a note, and widely vary its tone, either by quickly pushing (or pulling) the bar as far as it goes either way, or slowly moving the bar in the desired direction, depending on what effect the musician is trying to achieve. It is commonly done in combination with a pinch harmonic to get a more dramatic effect with the dive bomb.