Guitar How-To

Archive for the ‘Slide Guitar’ Category

This is a very basic tutorial on slide guitar playing. It is a good idea for any guitarist to experiment with slide guitar playing because it reveals the notes between the frets – the notes we don’t usually hear. You can buy a slide from any guitar store or you can make one from a wine bottle, lipstick holder or any metal or glass cylindrical shaped object. The only requirements are that it fits over your pinky and it’s long enough to go across the neck of your guitar.

You might want to try an open tuning or two. Open E is E B E G# B E. This tuning does put stress on the guitar neck because you are actually tuning three strings higher. Open G is D G D G B D.

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Slide guitar adds an extra aspect to any song but it is typically used in blues and country guitar accompaniment. Originally guitar slides were made from the necks of bottles or the blades of knives but nowadays you just go into a guitar shop and buy a metal or glass cylinder that you slip onto your finger and that immediately changes your status to slide guitar player. But you could take into account that a homemade slide will give you a rep for being an innovator.

Slide playing enhances the music of any kind of guitar, whether acoustic or electric. The way you use your guitar slide is up to you. You can put it onto any of your left hand fingers and you are good to go. Oce you have that slide fitted a whole new world of musical experimentation opens up for you.

The things people have used as guitar slides include handle bars from push-bikes, plastic tubes, spark plug socket wrenches and ceramic bits and pieces. There is even a company in France that makes slides from some kind of stone! While you are experimenting with various slides, you will possibly want to use heavy gauge strings.

You can begin your exploring the world of slide guitar by choosing whether to go with a standard metal guitar slide or one made of glass. Duane Allman famously used pill bottle that he discovered worked as a guitar slide when he was recovering from an illness. A glass slide will give you a more jangly tone while the sound of a metal slide is much warmer. You could also work with slides of different weights as that makes some difference too.

Once you have more or less decided which slide to use, fit it to different fingers on your left hand. Try playing for a while with the slide on your first finger, then switch to the second or third. Whatever feels most comfortable from the beginning will be what you use forever because your comfort is what decides your flexibility. The bottom line is don’t be swayed by what somebody else uses, let your own hand tell you what it prefers.

There are a couple of technical things to consider though, for instance id you put the slide on your little finger you are leaving your other fingers free to fret notes to add some variety to your playing. If you use an open tuning as many slide guitar players do, you could use the first, second or third finger which gives you the opportunity to use a heavier slide.

When you first start using a guitar slide it will be more comfortable to use a guitar with a high action. This will give you a much cleaner sound. And don’t forget that when you use a guitar slide the notes are directly over the guitar’s frets, not behind them as they are when you are fretting with your fingers.

Here’s a nice video guitar lesson on how to use a guitar slide . . .

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We have all seen Dobro guitars but very few of us know how to play one. The Dobro guitar is one of the family of resonator guitars. When we see them in our local guitar store we do not say, “Hey, nice resonator” but, “Hey, nice Dobro” because the resonator guitar has become generally known as the Dobro.

We recognize the resonator guitar by the metal cones in the top. They fill the space where the wooden soundboard would usually be. The metal resonators were an experiment aimed at making a guitar that could be heard above the other instruments in the band. They are basically speakers set in the body of your guitar that operate acoustically instead of by electricity. The development of the electric guitar solved the problem of making the guitar louder but after a while alot of musicians got to liking the metallic resonator sound. Blues and bluegrass musicians in particular were attracted by the wail of the resonator.

Dobro is the trade name for a single resonator guitar developed by John Dopyera, the originator of the resonator guitar. The name has long been the property of the Gibson company and they are quite fussy about how it is used. For the sake of this article the words Dobro and resonator guitar are interchangeable, just like in real life.

The Dobro comes in two kinds of neck. One has a square neck and is played in the lap in an open tuning. The square neck supports the high tension produced by some tunings. It is necessary to play the square neck Dobro with thumbpick and fingerpicks. If you go for the square neck guitar you will need to spend some time learning how to play your instrument sitting down with the guitar in your lap. Take this seriously – it is a trick that needs to be learned.

The other Dobro – the round neck – can be played in the normal guitar position using a bottleneck and the left hand fingers to fret notes. You can use normal tuning for the round neck resonator guitar as well as a variety of open tunings. You will need to damp the strings behind the slide so you do not get unwanted sound. If the slide is on your little finger, you slide one of your other fingers behind the slide with minimal pressure to damp the strings. You will also be learning the art of damping the strings with the palm of the right hand.

You could start with open G tuning. Change both E strings down a full step to D. Then change the 5th string down one full step to G. This string should sound an octave lower than the third G string. You could also use open D which is D A D F# A D. Other tunings you could use are D A F# D A D or G E C A G A or E C A G E C.