Getting started on slide guitar?

[weinergod]

I've been playing guitar for 9 years now, but I've never played slide my entire life.

I do own one, but I'm terrible with it and never cared for it.


Today I bought a Derek Trucks Band CD and my mind was blown, I decided to start learning how to play slide


What's a good starting point?
I don't know anything about slide guitar, not even what artists to listen to and all that

[super rad stuff]

Re: Getting started on slide guitar?

i don't know how to play slide that well either, but if you want to hear some cool slide stuff check out the early allman brothers stuff, like live at filmore east.

[Karmadog777]

Re: Getting started on slide guitar?

open C tuning would be a good starting point
CGCGCE

[guitfiddle]

Re: Getting started on slide guitar?

i don't know how to play slide that well either, but if you want to hear some cool slide stuff check out the early allman brothers stuff, like live at filmore east.

+1

After that, find out the guys that Duane listened to, and find those records and learn that stuff.

[HighGain]

Re: Getting started on slide guitar?

I'm not real good at it, either, but I want to be. I plan on picking up this DVD...

http://secure.nps1.net/guitarworld/?

[SlayerSlaughter]

Re: Getting started on slide guitar?

I was decent with it, and Open C tuning is amazing for it. Standard bar chord everything and slide with it. Things that you can do is go above the fret board, get kinda a high pitch sound going on, add a little more pressure than let it off and keep doing that, get another cool sound. If you don't want to go as far as Open C, than just try out Drop D, bar the DAD same with the DG. It's pretty fun.

And if you have a whammy bar or octave shifter/harmonizer than you can do some cool things too. But for no effects, just play around man, have fun.

[DesertRat]

Re: Getting started on slide guitar?

Practice, practice, practice. Try regular and various open tunings and pick out pentatonic scales in all of them. You'll eventually settle on a tuning that feels right to you. I prefer DADF#AD (open D), DADF#BD (D6), or DADFAD (D crossnote).

There are a bunch of tunings here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossno...g#Open_tunings

[jeremy]

Re: Getting started on slide guitar?

i play a fair amount of slide and 99.9% of it is in standard tuning. open tunings are great for learning the basics and good for structured songs but not so great for jamming until you really grasp the tuning and find ways to play different chords. standard tuning you dont have to relearn the whole neck but are limited to how many notes you can have in a chord, which i dont usually find to be an issue since im usually only playing chord fragments.

the two biggest things you need to work on are intonation and muting. you want the notes to be in tune and you dont want strings ringing when you dont want them to. slide control and vibrato are important too.

derek plays in open E which is the altered tuning i use most but there are lots of good tunings that lend themselves to different styles and songs.

duane allman, sonny landreth, warren haynes, lowell george, and derek trucks are some slide players to check out. see who you like and then see who they were influenced by. there will probably be a lot of crossover