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INTRO: Slide guitar comes from the Didley stick and the Mississippi Delta late 188090s up Mississippi River. Scott Ainsley on his Terraplane album plays this ( TR. 2 ,
Parchmans Farm Blues) It spread around the world.
Im self taught. I use three fingers and a thumb. Basically I do everything wrong but as
John Hartford once said your limitations are what creates your own personal style.
Influences: Mississippi John Hurt, John Fahey, Doc Watson Oak Publications book,
no recordings, learned from Tab without sound. Years later I would realize I had it ALL
wrong.
PHRASING: The #1 most important tool for slide players!!!!!! This will define your
personal style and make the playing your own.
Create it by varying the patterns of your playing with a number of tools/techniques. This
is the pallet youll draw from to create or arrange a piece of music and will define your
personal sound.
Among these:
SLIDES UP/DOWN Sliding up to or down from a note can make a note have a stronger
emotional impact. Think in terms of a voice and how a singer phrases notes for
emotion. You can do that with slide. I tend to let my gut instincts determine the slides
up to and down from a note. I look for the natural rhythm to a song and re-enforce it
with the playing. Sometimes I can be quite literal (Hot Day, Titanic), but usually Im
looking for something more musical or inventive.
Tremelo. sliding back and forth above and below a note or chord. This adds character
and sustain to a note plus a strong sense of emotion. Use the speed of the tremolo to
reflect the emotion of the song. Its also very effective on a chords.
Muting: Behind the slide cleans up the sound. Use your index finger, full across the
strings behind a chord, particularly on slides! DEMO
TAB, A QUICK PRIMER: I use standard music paper, spaces represent the guitar
strings, #s are the frets you finger, standard musical note tails represent the length of
any given note, 1/2 and whole notes look the same so you have to look at the music to
see what it is.
Playing behind the slide: Minor chords (3rd string, 1 fret behind) Demo: Lorena,
Last Letter, Last Day of winter on 9 string 7th chords (1st, 2 frets behind)
More precision in set up. Nut needs to be about 1/16th high.
Doubling your melody note with open 2nd string. Adds depth and richness to the
note, more volume too.
PLAYING SLOW: Harder than fast to be clean, but can be extremely expressive.
BREAKING UP THE RHYTHM Sometimes to get the melody in, Ill simplify the bass to
a single note per measure as in OLD FOLKS AT HOME
Sometimes it gets quite radical and I create a balance through imbalance, especially
when singing. More open spaces, chord fragments instead of full chords.. Here timing
is critical. Sometimes you can use percussive, muted notes to fill a time. LET THEM
IN PETER,
Shanandoah. Foster, Jeanie, Old Folks.
Go with the melody, you cant go wrong!
OTHER TUNINGS:
Tonic bass note (the name of the chord) is now the 5th string with alternating note on
the 4th string but now you can also double alternate between the 5th and the 4th and
the 5th and the 6th.