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Here's a long lost
slide lesson I found on my computer that I forgot to upload when we changed the site a couple of years back. The movie quality and camera angle are pretty awful, but the piece itself is neat and so here it is.
It's in Dropped-D tuning, so first of all lower that bass string down a full tone to D. The best way to do that is to keep twanging the D string while you lower the E string (twang it too) until you hear that they're both ringing smoothly together. If you hear any pulsating, any 'beating', you're not quite in tune yet. You may need to tweak the other strings as the release of tension from the neck can affect them also.
This is in the key of A and is based around the I-IV-V chords (A-D-E), and it's a good example of the reason I love dropped D so much: you can play normal guitar using familiar shapes and positions (only the bass string needs mental adjusting) and you can then throw in some slide lines to really perk the ears up. In this little piece I came up with there's a sort of question/answer thing going on between the normal playing and the slide playing. You'll see in the tab where to use the slide and where not to use the slide.
The most difficult thing about this, for those who are just getting into slide, will be the muting process. It's not easy to see in this movie, but my picking hand is very busy muting out strings that I don't want to be ringing. When you apply a slide to the strings of a guitar,
all strings start to ring out. That's OK is you're tuned to a chord (otherwise know as 'open tuning'), and that's the main reason open tunings came into being -- because it's a lot easier to sound good -- but in standard or dropped D tunings, you need to be more selective. You need to find notes that line up so that the slide can play them at the same time. Those 'line 'em ups' are part of familiar chord shapes and you need to mute out those notes that don't line up. I do that with my thumb and finger tips of the picking hand. It's a technique that requires LOTS of practice, but once you get it, you never need to think of it again. It just happens automatically.
My "How to Play Slide Guitar in Dropped D and Standard Tunings" goes into it all in depth.
This is obviously not for beginners and it will no doubt be very frustrating at first, but, it's all there in the tab, you can hear me doing it, and all it takes is time to train those fingers to obey. You'll quickly discover that this piece is an assembly of small bits and pieces and you need to move from one to the other smartly and smoothly. Luckily, there are a few sequences that repeat.
As I recall, I did this through my Digitech RP100 sound modeler, straight into the PC, but you can play it on acoustic too, or through an amp ... any old way you choose. We all have our own idea of what sound we want ...
Those little arrows in the tab mean that you play the third fret then quickly move up to the fourth fret (1/2 a tone up). It's not a slide up, but a little hammer-on.
Have fun!
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