A Beginners Guide To Slide Guitar

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] now I started getting into slide about five years ago and it's quickly become one of my favorite ways to play the guitar but I've noticed that most people who pick up slide don't stick with it they never make it past the basics of playing a slide on their guitar and for good reason playing slide can be really difficult and it goes against everything we know as guitar players but if you're at all familiar with Duane Allman Derek Trucks Sonny Landreth Joey Landreth wry cooter Arielle Posen or any number of other incredible slide guitar players you know what's possible when you can unlock that style of playing so today I'm gonna teach you the basics of slide guitar and five easy steps [Music] step one pick a slide now this is the part of the process that I think most people who are starting out overlook you go to your local guitar store and you just grab one off the rack that looks cool but you should actually stop and consider what type and size of slide you should look for the first thing to consider is material there's typically three main types of slide material out there glass metal and ceramic typically glass slides are gonna have a smoother feel and a warmer tone whereas metal slides are gonna be a little bit harsher and brighter than the glass slide and the ceramic slide usually sits right in between the two the next major thing to consider that most people overlook is the wall thickness generally the thinner your slide is the more control you're gonna have over your playing because your finger is actually resting closer to the string but there can be a trade-off in sustained and durability with glass slides than our glass slides break easier whereas thicker wall slides are gonna have a little bit more sustained a little bit warmer tone and be more durable overall but you're gonna have less control over them because your finger is sitting a little bit farther away from the string then after that you want to consider what finger you're gonna place your slide on and this is something you want to try and figure out in the beginning because you don't want to be switching between different fingers because you're never going to really be able to hone in your skills now personally I like to play on my third finger that's how I've always felt most comfortable but playing on the fourth finger is also very very popular the advantage of putting the slide on your pinky is it leaves these three fingers open to play chords or play licks and keep in mind when you're looking at buying your first slide you don't have to get it right on the first try slides are relatively inexpensive and if you're like me you're gonna end up with a collection of them but generally I like a glass slide and a brass slide these are my two go twos glass for when I want a warm smooth tone and if I'm gonna be playing maybe an electric slide solo and I want a little bit more speed and control and brass if I'm playing resonator or acoustic or even electric but I want a raspier rougher tone in the description box down below I'll have some of my favorite slides linked that I've been using for years next is probably one of the most important things and that is the fit you want a nice snug fit on whichever finger you're going to place the slide but you don't want it too tight it should fit like a good ring when it's on your finger it's snug and it's not gonna fall off but you don't have too much trouble taking it off when you need to also the length of the slide comes into play now more recently I've been using these these are made by a company called rock slide and as you can see it's beveled on the end and that bevel allows me to place it and bend my third finger around to make it more comfortable to play whereas a more traditional slide shape like this ceramic slide here goes all the way down over my ring finger and makes that Bend almost impossible I can still play this slide well but it makes me shift my wrist around the bottom of the neck which isn't always the most comfortable thing and it's kind of hard to [Music] step two pick a tunic now there are several common tunings that most slide guitar players will use and standard is one of them you really don't have to change your guitars tuning at all to play slide but I would actually recommend you start with open e and the reason is it's the easiest to transition into and that may seem counterintuitive if you haven't played in open tunings or non-standard tunings very much but let me explain in standard tuning our lowest string is tuned to eat and if you know a little bit about the notes on your fret board then you know where things like G a and B are up and down the neck but when we transition from standard tuning to open E this low E string stays the same it doesn't change at all so it serves as sort of a roadmap for your new tuning it can help you move around a little more easily than say something like open G for example now the best way to think about an open e tuning is we're essentially tuning the guitar to play this chord for us [Music] it's simply an E major triad just e G sharp and B so let's tune it up we're gonna leave our bottom east ring the same our fifth string is gonna go up a whole step from A to B [Music] our fourth string D is going to go up a whole step from D to e a third string G is going to go up a half step or semitone to G sharp [Music] and then our first two strings B and E stay the same and so without playing any notes in my left hand I've got an E major chord [Music] now a quick note about your guitar oftentimes people will talk about the need to set your guitar up for slide playing and this isn't necessarily a bad idea to set a guitar up for slide generally you might switch to heavier gauge strings and raise your action a little bit to get the strings off the fretboard this makes it easier to play without fretting out especially when you're learning but I actually don't do this I don't have any guitars that are set up specifically for slide playing and as a result I can play slide on any of the guitars that I own it is a little bit more difficult to play you have to be more conscious of not fretting out not pressing down on the strings too hard but overall it allows me to play slide on any of the guitars [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] step3 learn some chords now this is the biggest thing I think most players skip over when they're first learning slide you just want to get straight to rip in those sweet Duane Allman licks but if you can't play any chords you can't really play now this is where the beauty and brilliance of the open e tuning comes into play because we're tuned to this shape here essentially think of it as a major Barre chord on the sixth string root all we have to do to play a chord is bar on a specific fret so for instance here's E major the four chord of the key in this case a major is right here the five chord in the key in this case B major is right here and back up to one or e now the reality is you would never play that chord with your finger barring the fret instead you would play it with a slide one other thing to note here is if you play the bottom three strings the fourth fifth and sixth string together you've got a power chord and then when you throw the slide into the equation it makes it a lot more entertaining to play now before we talk about how to actually play with the slide there's one other chord voicing that I want to show you and it's one of my favorite ways to play in open E instead of barring across all six strings what I'm instead gonna do is just play the root note on the sixth string and the major third on the third string and leave the other strings open and I get this a major chord [Music] [Laughter] if I take that shape and slide it up a whole-step I get a B major voicing then if I slide up another whole step and play this shape right here I get a minor voicing [Music] now you can play this for every chord of the harmonized major scale and the key of e just switching between the major voicing where both notes are on the same fret and the minor voicing where you're taking the third note and dropping it down a half step then that allows me to play beautiful open chords like this now without a doubt the most important element of your slide playing is your intonation intonation simply means playing in tune and practicing chords is a great way to do this now this is where things can get a little tricky especially for beginners to actually play the chord in tune I'm not going to play in between the frets like I would if I was playing without a slide instead I want to place my slide directly on top of the friend and you can see how just a slight movement up or down the neck will completely knock the chord out of tune so practicing your chords with the slide is a great way to start working on your intonation [Music] you step four play some single notes being able to play single notes with a slide it's one of the most difficult things that new slide players have to figure out but the secret is in your right hand now if you watch I'm gonna play some single note stuff only on the third string here and look at how my right hand sits on the guitar my thumb is resting against the bottom three strings and my second and third finger are resting against the top two strings leaving my first finger available to pick the third string so I'm just gonna play a line up and down the third string here [Music] ah now if you notice no matter how much I was moving up and down the fretboard you didn't hear any of that and that was because of the muting in my right hand the second part of muting actually comes from the left hand or the slide hand what I'm actually playing on the neck I usually rest my first finger on the strings behind the slide now again I'm not pressing down I'm not fretting at all I'm simply just resting my finger against the strings to mute them now this is another area of control that you have as a slide player listen to what happens when I lift my finger off the back of the slide get all that nice juicy gritty greasy string noise but we don't always want that sometimes we want nice clean and clear decisive notes and when you want that you rest your first and or second finger on the strings behind the slide just to help tighten them up then after that the next thing to start to work on is transitioning notes between strings and this is where more right hand technique comes into play [Applause] this is a simple to string exercise that will teach you everything you need to know about moving between strings when playing slide I'm playing in the fifth position here in open E which is a and if you look here at my right hand you'll see the same layout I had before with my thumb resting on the bottom three strings my second and third finger resting on the top two strings and my first finger available to pick the open third string now this is where the hard part comes in you want to mute the third string as soon as you start to play the second string [Applause] Oh Oh go take some practice in time to get right but be patient and step number five is work on a basic blues shuffle we're gonna use the one four five progression we talked about earlier but we're gonna add one extra element and that is the flat three power right there on the third fret now this is great because it's gonna give you that really swampy bluesy feel especially between the flat three and the four now you've heard that sound a million times before and simply all I'm doing is sliding from the second fret to the third fret there [Music] and then pulling off then do that again slide up to the four chord [Music] and then you can even do it to the five so if you put all that together into a shuffle you get something like this [Music] [Music] so that is how to play slide at five simple steps this helped you out leave a like and comment down below and also be sure to check out the tone course my first video course that I just released last week it's linked in the description box down below as well as all of the other links if you want to support the channel more directly be sure to follow me on instagram at red shawl to keep up with what I've got going on each week and subscribe here to my youtube channel if you haven't done so already let me know what you want to see next in a lesson video like this anyways hope you enjoyed today's video i'm rachel and remember there is no plan B [Music]

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 831,683

Keywords: how to play slide guitar, how to play slide blues guitar, how to play slide blues, how to play slide guitar acoustic, Slide, Guitar, Lesson, Rhett Shull, slide guitar songs, slide guitar solo, slide guitar tuning, slide guitar standard tuning, slide guitar basics, slide guitar licks, slide guitar tutorial, open e tuning guitar, open g tuning guitar, Glass Slide, Guitar Lesson, Beginner Slide, beginner slide guitar licks, beginner slide guitar songs, beginner slide guitar open e

Id: YU3yv2-pnUU

Length: 17min 58sec (1078 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 08 2020