How to Play Slide Guitar

The Fundamentals of How to Play Slide Guitar

At its simplest, slide guitar technique involves running a cylinder made from various materials over the guitar strings in order to produce a unique sound. This is quite different from the usual fretting and picking most guitarists use to play, and it produces a smooth slide from one note to the next. It's also a great technique to combine with hammering on and pulling off.

Slide guitar playing involves many other factors that might not be obvious to the beginner. Something as simple as choosing the wrong guitar to learn with might make the difference between getting off on the right foot and becoming frustrated and giving up. Consider the following aspects of how to play slide guitar before you begin practicing to best ensure a positive and successful experience.

Pick the Appropriate Guitar

While the experienced slide player could likely pick up any guitar and make beautiful music on it, the beginner might struggle without a guitar that is easier to learn on. The secret to a good beginning slide guitar is high action. Unlike learning how to play guitar with your fingers when low action makes it easier to fret the strings, slide guitar is just the opposite. A guitar with very low action will cause the slide to rattle against the frets and fret board and make a tremendous amount of undesirable noise. A guitar with high action, however, gives the beginner a little more space between the strings and the fret board, thus creating more room for error. The following are some options to consider when choosing the guitar you want to begin playing on.

• Cheap Guitars: The old $50 guitar you bought when you were just starting now has a purpose! Slide guitar is much more forgiving with issues of intonation and high action than playing with your fingers, so before you go out and spring for a new instrument, dig that cheap guitar you got at a garage sale out of your closet and see how it works.

• Dobro - Resonator Guitar: Dobro is the brand name of a particular Gibson resonator acoustic guitar that is designed for slide guitar. The sound of the instrument is common to bluegrass and country music. The action on a resonator is very high and the strings can be almost an inch above the fret board making them impossible to fret with your fingers. You typically play this type of guitar with it sitting across your lap. If you like the sound of this instrument, it would make an excellent choice for learning slide guitar.

• Lap Steel: A lap steel is similar to a resonator in that they have very high action and are typically played lying across the guitarist's lap. Lap steel guitars can be either acoustic or electric. The acoustic models are common in bluegrass and Hawaiian music while the electric models are featured in rock music.

Tunings

While a standard guitar tuning (low to high E-A-D-G-B-E) could be used to play slide guitar, typically players tune their guitars to an open tuning when playing slide. The tuning you use depends on the style of music you play. Below are some common open tunings.

• Open G: Open G (low to high D-G-D-G-B-D) is very common in rock music and the blues.

• Open D: Open D tuning (low to high D-A-D-F#-A-D) is another tuning that is very common with blues and rock musicians.

Both Open G and Open D are often capoed at the second fret to create the Open A and Open E tunings, respectively.

• C6 Tuning: C6 doesn't have a concrete standard like Open G and Open D, but a common tuning is, low to high, C-E-G-A-C-E. This tuning is common in country and swing music.

Slides

There are three main options a slide guitarist has when it comes to slides, and the choice is all about sound.

• Glass: The technique of slide guitar originated with the neck of a bottle being used to slide along the strings. These "bottleneck" slides are now sold as glass slides. The sound of glass is the most mellow and warm of all the slide materials.

• Steel: The main benefit of steel slides is that they don't break when you drop them. The sound produced is sharper and more biting than that of the glass slide.

• Brass: If you're searching for a slide with the most aggressive attack, your best choice is brass. These heavy slides have the most searing sound that really cuts through the mix.

Other Resources

The Internet holds a wealth of resources on how to play slide guitar. Also, Amazon.com has plenty of books, DVDs, and CDs to help you along your journey.