What is slide guitar? It’s one of the great sounds of American roots music. Putting bottleneck to strings may be one of the most evocative and expressive ways to coax sound from an acoustic guitar.
Guitar Lesson: Simple Acoustic-Blues Tips That Can Improve Your Bottleneck-Slide Technique
There are several things you can do to get a good slide sound: Set up your guitar with heavier strings, use an open tuning, try different kinds of slides, dampen the strings, and learn to properly intonate. Getting a good sound is often as much a function of proper setup as it is technique.
Learn an Open-D Bottleneck Slide Guitar Arrangement of “Silent Night”
Fingerstyle guitarist Steve Baughman shares an open-d acoustic guitar arrangement of the beloved Christmas carol "Silent Night" that lends itself nicely to slide treatment.
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Video Lesson: An Intro to Bottleneck Slide Blues Guitar
Learn the basics of acoustic slide guitar and start to find the notes between the notes where the range of human emotion runs.
Blues Lesson: Learn Jontavious Willis’ Take on “Poor Boy, Long Ways from Home”
Here's an open-G arrangement of the traditional blues tune "Poor Boy, Long Ways from Home"
Exploring Slide Guitar Outside of Blues
While slide guitar is perhaps most commonly associated with the blues, it can be used to excellent effect in a range of other styles.
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Learning the Nuts and Bolts of Slide Guitar
Here are some tips from contemporary players Jontavious Willis, Kelly Joe Phelps, and Jimmy Page
Getting Started with Slide Guitar
The slide allows the guitarist to find the notes between notes—those places between the frets where the slippery quality of human emotion runs.
Video Lesson: How to Play Bottleneck in a Range of Styles
Slide/bottleneck guitar can evoke flavors ethereal and lyrical or aggressive and bombastic. From Santo & Johnny’s “Sleepwalk” to Elmore James’ “Dust My Broom” and on to Debashish Bhattacharya’s Indian slide musings, this approach delivers a wide spectrum of sounds, emotions, and cultural touchstones.
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Video Lesson: Learn to Play Slide Like Jimmy Page
In this lesson, you'll get Jimmy Page's blues riffs and musical ideas under your fingers and learn how to take them somewhere new and exciting.
Video Lesson: Exploring Kelly Joe Phelps’ Slide Work in Open Tunings
Prewar blues is just a stepping-off point for Phelps’ intricate fingerpicking and soulful vocals. In this lesson, you'll adapt his open-D ideas to bottleneck style.
How to Combine Fretted Notes with Slide Notes
Learn how to employ this classic blues technique with this excerpt from Acoustic Guitar Slide Basics
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How to Play Slide Guitar: Bottleneck Basics
At its best, slide guitar playing combines economical phrasing with special attention to pitch and tone.
Video Lesson: How to Choose the Right Guitar Slide
The two classic slide materials are glass and metal. Some of the first slides were made from the tops of wine bottles (hence the term bottleneck guitar) or from lengths of pipe (hence the term . . . er . . . metal slide).
Lesson: Guitarist Kelly Joe Phelps Offers Some Bottleneck Slide Tips (Video)
If I’m going to do a lot of fretting and slide at the same time, the big thing I’m working on is to not let the slide bar come away from the string.
Acoustic Guitar Slide Basics | Acoustic Guitar Champions
Explore the haunting sounds of acoustic slide guitar with this easy-to-follow, step-by-step instruction series.