Slide Guitar For Beginners

I’m not really an expert on slide guitar, so the following stuff is just for beginners. Slide guitar is an essential part of the Blues, I had to start with it. Duane Allman’s playing on “Layla and other assorted love songs” just blew me away, the same did EC unplugged. More than any other guitar technique it depends on the right feeling. The basics can be learned within a day, but to master it you need a long time.

Most slide guitar instructions start like “and now we use the open xyz tuning”. That means you can forget what you know about the fretboard and forget both your left and right hand techniques. You have to learn everything new. To avoid this, I’ll first explain slide guitar on standard tuning, so all you need is a slide. Open tunings (see below) give a different sound and have their advantages, but they are not better in every case. The late Muddy Waters for example played in standard tuning, also Duane and EC on some songs. Open tuning is often used for Delta Blues on acoustic guitars, because you need the bass strings in correct tuning. For soloing on electric guitars it’s not that important, so you can play in standard tuning. However, you have to damp some strings, which is usually done with the picking hand. That’s why most slide players prefer fingerstyle. Damping is more important in standard tuning, because you get dissonant intervals when the strings with all their overtones ring out.

The Guitar

You can use both acoustic and electric guitars, as long as they don’t have nylon strings. If you want to play much slide guitar, prepare a guitar just for this job. That means using heavier strings (no “super slinky”…) and a high action (distance of the strings to the fretboard). If you have an extra guitar only for slide, you can also try out the open tunings. If you have only one and play sometimes slide or want to switch between slide and normal playing, use the standard tuning.
Resonator guitars (i.e. a Dobro) are great for acoustic slide guitar, they give a loud, metallic “Delta Blues” tone due to the metal cones build in.

The advantage of slide guitar is that you can play it on old guitars with worn-out fretboards or even cheap guitars with bad adjusted frets. You don’t need the frets!

10 Ultimate Guitar Tips

Improving on the guitar, for many guitarists, is the reason for playing the instrument in the first place. The warm, self-satisfied glow inside when you finally see the benefit of all those hours of practicing can't be beaten – but all too often those hours are meanderings in the dark: aimless and not actually all that enjoyable.
But it really shouldn't be that way. So this lesson (complete with tab) is designed to put some life back into your learning.

To bring you this lesson, MusicRadar's sister magazine Guitarist asked some of the top guitar tutors in the business for their wit, wisdom and home truths about what it takes to really improve your playing. You'll find 10 of those tips below.

1. Golden Rule: practice with a metronome

Great players have great timing, so practice with a metronome – every single time you practice. (Mike Goodman)

2. Know the intervals

Most guitarists don't know the notes on the fingerboard – which means there's no point venturing into the world of musical theory as you won't be able to apply it. Here's an exercise that'll get you knowing the intervals between notes in no time… The exercise cycles through the four triads in one area of the neck: witness the intervals as they change and then use the roots, 3rds and 5ths as a reference from which to work out where the other intervals are. (Mike Goodman)