Let's Talk About Learning to Play Slide Guitar

[Mr. Jelly]

I think the best way to learn slide is to learn songs. A person learns allot from the differences between songs.

[Bluenose]

Duane and Ry, Johnny Winter were my favorites back in the day. Charley Parr is a fine slide player and one guy I would make an effort to see play live and hopefully I'll have that opportunity sometime.

Developing a good vibrato will sound like you're more in tune.

BTW It's been said that Duane Allman learned to play slide after listening to a Taj Mahal record released in 1967 featuring Jesse Ed Davis on slide and Ry Cooder on rhythm guitar and it's one the first records I ever bought.

[SCVJ]

[QUOTE=JonPR;7418100]My basic slide tips - FWIW - are:

4: watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdgrQoZHnNY (open G)


That Son house video is amazing, but I can't imagine learning how to get even close to this kind of playing. If you want to try, the following clip is much easier to follow and to understand the lyrics. Plus, the guy proves that you don't need a $4,000 National to get a decent resonator tone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGXthQhkthE (Sorry, I have never learned how to embed a video).


The Son House clip made me think of the way blues lyrics are sometimes treated on liner notes. It has always been amusing/annoying to me. I can picture some young white dude in Boston or NYC writing down the song titles, etc. to go to the printer.

Some examples:

There's a Muddy Waters song which says "Can't get no grinding from the mill", a reference to a grist mill. (I think it's a metaphor for something salacious). The album cover had the word Mill as "meal". Granted, that's about how Muddy pronounced it, but the correct word is obvious from the lyrics.

There's a Lightnin' Hopkins song titled on the album as "Fishin' Clothes". The song is about him being so poor he didn't have "sufficient clothes".

I have an Eric Clapton songbook (one of those expensive slick productions) in which a line is printed that he's so poor he has to "rob the blind". The original old version by the authentic bluesman (May have been "Walkin' Blues") said "ride the blinds", which I learned referred to a part of the undercarriage of a boxcar where hobos would ride when they couldn't get inside. When I listened to Clapton's version after seeing the printed lyrics, he clearly got it right as "ride the blinds".

Not really a rant, just interesting blues trivia. BTW, the line "when I got there she was layin' on the coolin' board" refers to the practice of putting a body on a board, or table for it to cool after death. Usually the board was perforated and may have had ice underneath which slowed down decomposition. Probably only in rural funeral homes a hundred years ago.

The other line that's hard to understand is "got a letter this mornin", reckon how it read?, Hurry hurry, the one you love is dead" The word reckon was definitely used that way when I was growing up in the South in the 50's.

Sorry this is a little off the subject, but since I'm the OP I guess it's okay to hijack my own thread! Now I've got to go put on my fishin' clothes and go rob some blind people...

[Charlie Bernstein]

Originally Posted by Bluenose

. . . Duane Allman learned to play slide after listening to a Taj Mahal record released in 1967 featuring Jesse Ed Davis on slide and Ry Cooder on rhythm guitar and it's one the first records I ever bought.

Yep. Greg tells the story in the documentary Muscle Shoals. Hilarious.

[Mycroft]

Originally Posted by Rudy4

Do consider lap steel to dip your toes in the water. You may find it quite satisfying in even something as simple as an open E or open G tuning.
Lap steels can be found new very inexpensively, of you might choose to build your own if you have a small shop area. There are complete plans and information at the internet archive of my old website here:

http://web.archive.org/web/201604062...com/page5.html

You can get as fancy as you want, and many folks are incorporating benders on lap steels now. Youtube will show you examples.

Don't be too hung up about a finger or two preventing you from making great music. Jerry Garcia and Django Reinhardt didn't let it slow them down.

Or Tony Iommi, who had to use artificial fingertips on his fretting hand.

My first lap steel was an old 50s plywood Silvertone acoustic, which had a warped neck that I picked up for cheap. I put a nut riser on it and off I went.

[Mycroft]

Originally Posted by RichardPavelec2

This is an old thread that I found, but I wish to contribute to it, or rather ask a question to you all. This is a rather complex comment that breaks my heart a bit..

I am in advanced level, progressive guitarist that owns a custom carbon fiber, double neck, acoustic electric dual six string. In the past, I used one neck for standard tuning, and the other for DADGAD tuning.. I was big on fingerpicking and complex chording..

In the past year, I had a major finger injury on my left hand index finger in which I form chords. It was a deep cut that also severed the nerve in my index finger. It is healing awkwardly and some times. I worry that I may lose feeling completely in that finger and no longer be able to use it. The skin is growing back in an unnormal fashion and even after a year of healing, I still feel phantom pain as the skin and blood vessels rebuild

I can’t give up on guitar completely. So I have decided that maybe, I will convert my double neck into a dual neck slide guitar. This means I will raise the action with a high nut and saddle for each neck so that I do not ‘fret out’ when using a slide with current low action. I will also choose the 2 tunings that I can jump back-and-forth with. Much like a double neck, steel guitar.

The problem is, I have never played slide guitar before. This will be my forced opportunity to convert. I will use my wedding band for the slide and then no longer use my index finger. It breaks my heart to not be able to play like I used to but maybe this is a unique opportunity to become a specialized instrument of slide guitar playing

My question to you is, if you were in my position, and you have the ability to have a double neck guitar, which always held to specific slide, tuning, which two tuning would you use? I want tunings that I can jump back-and-forth with, perhaps to change chording or pitch.

Here is the kicker: I never liked blues, music, or Americana slide style. And I don’t want to pursue that style. Most of the tunings that I will choose must be in a minor or augmented, chord fashion. So please help me with unique tunings, that are a little along the sad side, and not so much honky-tonk blues open, Major chord, tunings.

Open D and Open G, probably. (Low bass Open G: DGDGBD. High bass is GBDGBD and would probably put too much stress on your guitar neck. Open D is DADF#AD. I tend t think in terms of where the notes appear on the scale. So Open D is 151351 and Open G is 515135.)

FYI if you still want to be able to fret, you don't need to raise the string much. I can play bottleneck on my fingerpicking setup guitars, but have to be careful not to bonk the frets. I do have one guitar with slightly higher strings. But not much higher as I still fret notes as well as play bottleneck. Experiment with putting a strip or two cut from a business card underneath the nut. Also bump the 1st string a gauge or two, for better tone and to support the slide.

[The Bard Rocks]

Originally Posted by Blueser100

I tried several times to learn slide. Just isn't in my range of abilities. Also, as a lady with very small fingers, there isn't a slide made or customized that fits.

Merle Watson used a sparkplug socket. They come in a few sizes.

[Charlie Bernstein]

Originally Posted by SCVJ

. . . The Son House clip made me think of the way blues lyrics are sometimes treated on liner notes. . . .

Yup! Sites like UltimateGuitar.com are full of them. The last one I saw was for Richard Thompson's "Vincent Black Lightning": "I see angels on Ariels to carry me home." The transcriber knew some Shakespeare but didn't know that some old motorcycles had aerials.

[SCVJ]

Originally Posted by The Bard Rocks

Merle Watson used a sparkplug socket. They come in a few sizes.

Lowell George (Little Feat) used one too. He said that made it easy to get a slide no matter where they were playing, there was always a Sears nearby.

[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by Charlie Bernstein

Yup! Sites like UltimateGuitar.com are full of them. The last one I saw was for Richard Thompson's "Vincent Black Lightning": "I see angels on Ariels to carry me home." The transcriber knew some Shakespeare but didn't know that some old motorcycles had aerials.

I too enjoy the mystery of some lyric transcriptions. It wasn't until this century that anyone figured out a sensible lyric to Geeshie Wiley's "Last Kind Words" for example.

"Vincent Black Lightning?" Shakespeare yes, but also a longstanding British motorcycle maker that RT would be referencing.

Ariel Cycles

[Mycroft]

Originally Posted by Blueser100

I tried several times to learn slide. Just isn't in my range of abilities. Also, as a lady with very small fingers, there isn't a slide made or customized that fits.

Try these guys:

https://www.diamondbottlenecks.com/

You can also put something like painters tape inside the barrel of the slide to reduce the inner diameter.

[Mycroft]

Originally Posted by Charlie Bernstein

Yup! Sites like UltimateGuitar.com are full of them. The last one I saw was for Richard Thompson's "Vincent Black Lightning": "I see angels on Ariels to carry me home." The transcriber knew some Shakespeare but didn't know that some old motorcycles had aerials.

Actually the transcriber had it correct. Ariel was an old British motorcycle company founded in 1901. They were a contemporary of Vincent.

[Mycroft]

Originally Posted by SCVJ

Lowell George (Little Feat) used one too. He said that made it easy to get a slide no matter where they were playing, there was always a Sears nearby.

The drawback that I found when I tried one was that there was a lot of mass out past the fingertip. While mass generally equals tone in a slide, in this case it made it much harder to control the side. Better to have the mass on the sides of the slide.

[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by Mycroft

The drawback that I found when I tried one was that there was a lot of mass out past the fingertip. While mass generally equals tone in a slide, in this case it made it much harder to control the side. Better to have the mass on the sides of the slide.

I tried the Craftsman socket too. Works OK on electric if you have stout strings and enough action height -- but as with your report, I found it too harder to control.

With electric you have lots of options to get the sustain you want if that's what you want. Lowell George's secret was lots of compression. He would be likely to get that sound even with a lightweight pill bottle slide ala Duane Allman.

On an acoustic setup for slide I've actually come to like a ceramic or even rough finished "bone" ceramic slide a lot of the time. Doesn't sound like metal or glass, has its own thing. The rough finish is great for when you want (rather than want to avoid) the gritty sound of slide on the strings.

Another thing I've been trying lately is shorter slides. A couple years back I noticed on a video linked here that Fred McDowell used very short slides, so I've been giving that a try. Makes it easier to get a ground-bass drone going for that sort of thing.

Other than the player feel and control, I'm not sure that the mass of the slide really contributes all that much to the sound. Metal or glass sound different, and it's likely even that different metals or even types of glass might make a timbral contribution, but the mass itself is likely more of how it responds to the player's technique controlling it.

[Diamond Slides]

The mass / density of any slide will mainly affect sustain ~ if you slide up to a note and hold the slide on that note, the slide with heavier mass will sustain the note longer 👍

Slide On!

Ian.