Single-String Melodies

When you play with a slide, you don’t want to press the string down to the fretboard. When the slide makes contact with the string, the effect is the same as pressing the string into contact with a fret: the string length is shortened, creating a higher pitch. This means that to get a pitch with the slide that matches the pitch you’d get with a fretted note, you need to be right over the fret, not in between two frets as you would be without the slide. It is having the slide, not a fret, stop the string that makes slide guitar sound like slide guitar, because unlike a fret, you can move the slide while the note is still vibrating. That’s how you get the unique sound of slide guitar: it’s the sound of a string’s pitch being moved fluidly, with no step-by-step increments, from one pitch to the next.

Make sense? So you’ve got to really pay attention to your touch--how heavily or lightly you bear down on the strings with the slide. And there’s more: since the pitch you get from the string is the direct result of where you place the slide on it, your intonation matters now. That means that not only does your guitar need to be in tune, but you need to be in tune--you need to be able to hear if you’re at the pitch you want. You can do a certain amount of slide placement by sight, but to play slide convincingly requires learning your way around with your ears as well.

Your fretting hand can help too. While it's true that you've got this slide coming between you and strings, and you don't have the feel of the frets to guide you, you’ve still got your thumb riding along the back of the neck when you play, and your index finger riding along the strings behind the slide (more on that later). You can use these to stay oriented so that you don’t feel like your fretting hand is just floating in space.

OK. Having said all that, let’s see what it actually feels like to play a little slide.

FIRST SLIDE

In this lesson, we’re going to play in open-D tuning: from the sixth string to the first, D A D F# A D. You can check your open strings against the tuning track to make sure you are in tune.

Tuning: D A D F# A D

Open D is a good beginning point for slide because it allows you to play a wide range of melodies without ever leaving the high string, and the high string is the easiest string to play cleanly on with the slide. Let’s start with placing the slide directly over the fret you want. Play Example 1 by placing the slide on the high string directly over the fourth fret each time there’s a four in the tablature, and playing the open high string in between (the zeros in the tablature).

Example 1

The slide doesn’t have to cover all six strings, nor do you have to use the end of the slide closest to your palm if you’re just playing the high string. With these single-string exercises, you can get a cleaner sound by angling the slide so that it’s touching only the high string. The idea is to cover only the strings you’re actually applying the slide to.

Right. So let’s get some practice dropping the slide onto the string in more than one place. Example 2 is made up of part of the D-major scale:

Example 2