Slide Guitar - Technique

Technique

The slide is pressed against the strings—lightly, so as not to touch the strings to the fretboard, and parallel to the frets. The pitch of the strings can then be continuously varied by moving the slide up and down the neck. The usual limitation in fretted guitar playing of twelve pitches per octave does not apply. Indeed, in pure slide guitar playing the frets serve no purpose, other than as a visual reference. The technique lends itself to glissandi (swoops up or down to a note); in addition it has the ability to evoke sounds of the human voice, crying, sighing or weeping, or natural noises. Another strength of the technique is its vibrato, which is easily achieved by oscillating the hand so that the slide goes quickly back and forth.

The major limitation of slide playing is of course that only one chord shape is available: whatever the strings happen to be tuned to going straight across. Many slide guitarists will still use their free fingers to fret the strings if they want to employ that sound as well. Using the free fingers opens up the possibility of playing chord shapes other than the straight line given by the slide. One strategy is to use the free fingers for rhythm work, and intersperse this with lead phrases played with the slide.

The guitar may be held in the normal guitar-playing position (that is, with the face of the guitar more-or-less vertical) or it may be held flat, with the face of the guitar horizontal. In the latter case the guitar may sit flat in one's lap or on a stool, face up, or held in this position by a strap, and played standing up. If holding the guitar in the normal vertical position, it is more common to use the tube type of slide. In the horizontal approach, solid bars or "bullets" are more commonly used, and the grip is overhand: the hand is not wrapped around the neck, the index finger is nearest the bridge, the little finger nearest the nut, fingers pointing away from the chest.

Usually, a slide player will use open tuning, although standard tuning is sometimes used. In open tuning the strings are tuned to sound a chord when not fretted; sliding the bottleneck up and down the guitar neck gives that chord in various keys. The chord tuned to is most often major. Open tunings commonly used with slide include Open D or "Vestapol" tuning: D-A-d-f#-a-d; and Open G or "Spanish" tuning: D-G-d-g-b-d . Open E and Open A, formed by raising each of those tunings a whole tone, are also common. These tunings can be traced back to the 19th century through the banjo, predating the Hawaiian guitar. Another open D tuning is D-A-d-f#-a-d. Other tunings are used as well.

Occasionally a bottleneck is used on only the highest two strings of a guitar in standard tuning, usually in live performance to introduce just a short passage of bottleneck effect into a piece which otherwise consists mainly of guitar played in standard fashion.

Slide guitar is most often fingerpicked, with or without plastic or metal picks on the thumb and fingers. However some players use a flatpick (plectrum).

The bottleneck or tube type of slide is usually worn over the ring (3rd) or little (4th) finger. Wearing it on the 4th finger has the advantage of leaving one more finger free to fret notes if desired. However some players feel that they get better control using the ring finger. Most instructors recommend letting one or more of the fingers behind the slide rest lightly on the strings to help mute unwanted vibrations.