Slide guitar - do you wear the glass ring?

I have an old sleeve bushing from a Packard motor that has been my slide for fifty years. I'm OK at it, though I do better with a lap steel than a standard Spanish 6. I frequently use open G tuning.
 
I have a Dunlop glass slide and have tried off and on to play but I absolutely suck at it!!:blink:

I suck at fingerpicking and flat picking too, now that I think about it! Does anyone want to buy a bunch of guitars?:LOL:
 
RVA said:
What about the fact that this leaves you with one less finger for chords and lead than you would have with a tube if some sort?
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When I play slide, that's what I do. I play slide. Chords, fingered licks, and other stuff gets done when ya put your lighter back in your pocket. Kinda like Tuco in the bathtub scene from The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly...
"You come to shoot, shoot. Don't talk.";)
 
Speaking of slide, I just discovered this lady yesterday.

I am really liking her.

 
eSGEe said:
what is the best set up for slide?
Should higher action be used? I am always clanking the frets....... :(

PErhaps more practice and a more subtle hand? (can you play slide bass???) or maybe I am just to ham handed for the slide.....
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One of the skills important to practice when playing slide is applying the right amount of pressure on the strings in order not to hit the frets. And as always, how you set the guitar up is a matter of personal preference. I like a slightly higher action (not much, though) and I use a set of .11 strings instead of my regular .10.
 
Gahr said:
One of the skills important to practice when playing slide is applying the right amount of pressure on the strings in order not to hit the frets. And as always, how you set the guitar up is a matter of personal preference. I like a slightly higher action (not much, though) and I use a set of .11 strings instead of my regular .10.
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Do you mute the strings entirely behind the slide?
 
I like playing slide when I'm feeling swampy, but TBH, I dropped my slide a couple weeks ago and it shattered (glass) and I have not felt compelled to run out and get a new one.
 
Now that @Sérgio asked, I had to check. It seems I mute very slightly with my middle finger most of the time, but lift the finger off the strings when holding a note, especially when applying vibrato.
 
I mute with my first finger while working the slide on my fourth finger... This works for
me and cuts down on string clatter. String clatter comes from playing slide on a guitar set up
with regular low action.

I like to mix chords and runs with slide, by using my first two fingers and an open tuning.
so for me, the slide HAS to go on my fourth finger.
 
I've play a little. Different tunings for different things, usually open D or open G. I have a glass slide but prefer to use one of the small types that fit between the 2 knuckles of my finger, so its in the middle of my finger leaving the tip kinda freeWP_20170406_001.jpg
I did have a short glass one but dropped it on the concrete floor & haven't replaced yet, luckily I had the metal one, though its brighter & zingier. They come in different diameters so it doesn't matter your finger size. You do need to damp the strings behind the slide to avoid weird overtones, when sliding up you get an overtone going down & vise versa. You also need to damp the unused strings with your fretting hand (especially with the full length slide). Oh, Johnny Goo is right about Gary Rossington using a standard tuning for Free Bird. Well, almost. He tunes the B string down to a G also. I read it in an interview with him. Cheers
 
Well... I like to pretend to play slide. Glass on the Pinky for me... and a few good beers... :cheers:

For a very brief moment in '09, I tried Open G tuning with my short stint of getting reintroduced to a guitar instructor... and I liked it a lot. But I didn't stick with it. Maybe someday I'll try again.

Derek Trucks: His precision, dexterity, and phrasing is second to none.

Sonny Landreth: is like a magician on the slide. He notes like crazy behind the slide.

Dave Hole: now there's a blues-rocking wild-man on a slide... (y)
 
I was learning but let it slide (see that?), busy enough with standard fretting / picking.
I was following some on line lessons with Stuart Ziff.
Finger pick with a brass plumbing nipple with the threads cut off and polished up on the pinky.
Mute behind the slide.

The dude from Foghat is a badass slide player.
At least he was the night we saw him last summer opening for ZZ-Top.
 
Slide is a great thing to get into, can be extremely expressive. I think the open G & open A tunings are more commonly used, Robert Johnson's walking blues, crossroads etc, Duane Allman, Ry Cooder uses a lot & so many others, though I prefer the open D or open E tuning for a harder rock style slide. Elmore James' dust my broom is a great song to start learning slide in this type tuning. Pete Wells (deceased) Rose Tattoo guitarist used open E exclusively. A trick he used was to tune the G string slightly flat to get a dissonant sound that is covered up with slide vibrato. A couple of side notes while I think of Rose Tattoo, this is a band that Slash cites as a major influence, saying that G n R, as we know them, would not exist without Rose Tattoo. They'll be touring again (with Dai Pritchard on slide) as soon as the drummer gets out of jail. Cheers
 
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I love slide guitar. I always use open E, with the slide on my ring finger. This allows my to add extra notes to change chords without moving position very much. I use a Coricidin bottle on electric guitars and a piece of steel pipe that I bored on a lathe to fit over my knuckle for playing my dobro. I'll usually have one electric with a slightly higher action for slide stuff. I also have a lap steel and other implements of destruction.
 
How about sticking a screwdriver between the strings & fretboard (nut end) to raise the string action. I posted earlier about reading of Lynyrd Skynyrd's Gary Rossington down tuning the B string to a G for the Free Bird slide. I just revisited the site (Gibson's site) where he says that this is exactly what he used to do, but it was chewing the neck up so now he has a piece of wire that he uses for this purpose. Here's a link to the interview
Gary Rossington on Playing SGs, Les Pauls and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s New God & Guns
Cheers
 
ivan H said:
How about sticking a screwdriver between the strings & fretboard (nut end) to raise the string action.
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Oh my, that sounds painful. I would think you run the risk of scratching your FB and placing too much tension in the wrong places (which ones I am too lazy to discern right now).
 
Some of my "slide only" guitars. I also like to play slide on one of my Les Pauls, any of my SGs, and my Firebird. Every now and then, I'll set one up specifically for slide.

 
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