slide guitar anybody?

[fenderrules]

being a blues player i thought it would be essential to have some knowledge on that little metal (or glass) tube called the slide.

just bought a 220 dunlop chrome steel slide from swee lee yesterday. gotta admit it was fun when holding a note sounds brings you back to the era of the good ol' blues. its abit complicated at first cuz you have to bear in mind that the slide must be placed on top of the fret and not between it, and that you must use 2 fingers to mute the unwanted strings. and in my case i prefer playing slide guitar with the slide on my ring finger.

its really different playing with a slide too cuz im so used to playing with ALL my fingers and i have to really know my fretboard damn well in order to play some tunes. the A pentatonic blues was a good start and making some simple licks were'nt hard on my fingers as well.

haha okay so who plays slide guitar here?


cheers

 

[Crawldaddy]

Hmm.

Glass / aluminium slide user here. I have pretty big fingers and hands so I tend to use a very big slide (with a large inner diameter).

Watch out for those dunlop chrome slides though... on the exterior its chrome plated but the inside surface which your finger would come into contact with isn't protected and it's prone to rusting.

hence I've gone the way of Aluminium and glass.

I generally use normal tuning and Open E tuning (E-B-E-G#-B-E) for slide playing.

 

[fenderrules]

oh yeah, i think i felt some rust inside when i was playing today. might be my sweat when playing too much.

im not a big user of alternate tunings tho, but if i may ask is it easier to play slide guitar with open e or d?

 

[Crawldaddy]

Hmm.

Well you can't really go wrong when any set of notes you play with the slide on all the 6 strings is already a chord right? :wink:

But it's a whole different challenge altogether.

 

[Chang]

Hi fenderrules,

Im recently experimenting around with a slide as well (actually not pure slide but a mix of slide and normal fretting playing)

I use standard tuning, though i tried Open E before and it was pretty easy to cook up with some licks since most of the notes were in the 5th and 12th fret (and 7th i think)

I usually use my fingers to play, but now i'm trying to incorporate the pick, and maybe with fingers too?

I must say slide playing is very interesting. Opens up a bunch of new ideas.

 

[fenderrules]

hey chang

observing some videos......i notice that fingerpicking is a popular technique since they have to pick more than one note at once. i think if im right thats the bluegrass genre..alot of mood and delta style blues involved. like muddy waters.

the best technique however would be chicken picking, which is a combination of using a pick and your fingers at the same time.

i still prefer using a pick cuz i like playing double and triple notes and with the right amount of overdrive it invokes alot of mood.


cheers

 

[Chang]

pure picking is very hard, because u have to use ur fingers to mute the other strings. Or at least i still cant get the other strings to be quite if im playing with just the pick

The problem also arises when u play not only on a single string. Hence the fingers are incorporated to mute the strings.

Muting is probably the hardest thing to achieve in slide playing.

 

[tany]

i think my slide is so big? i cant fret with my first 2 fingers even when my slide is on my fourth finger. haha i should get a smaller one?

 

[Chang]

size wise im not very sure. I using the D'andrea glass slide.

I tot it's more or less the same size? Mmm maybe try using your thumb!

Joking haha.

I think a new slide is the way to go.

 

[Mobius]

Slide playing is very good for improving ur ears and ur fretboard sense, cos sliding slightly off, gives u a slightly flat or sharp note which can be quite irritating. Check out Derek Trucks or Rory Gallagher's Bullfrog Blues