Beginning Slide Guitar

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Instructor: Richard Lundmark Level: Beginner Topic: Reference Style: Blues

Excerpt: Welcome to this introduction to slide guitar playing! First of all, this will not be a song tutorial, where you learn to play riffs or solos. Rather, this is a technical overview and reference guide to help you make the most of your slide playing, regardless of musical style. We will discuss both theoretical points as well go through the key technical aspec...

Media Length: 2:13

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Instructor: Richard Lundmark Level: Beginner Topic: Reference Style: Blues

Excerpt: Which type of slide you choose to use are largely a matter of taste. Different materials produce different tones. If you lay acoustic (Dobro, lap, regular acoustic) might mean you choose a copper or metal slide, depending on style. A glass slide is perhaps the most traditional type of slide, whilst the chromed steel slides sold today are perhaps the most com...

Media Length: 3:17

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Instructor: Richard Lundmark Level: Beginner Topic: Reference Style: Blues

Excerpt: Which finger you choose to use your slide with, also affects your playing to a large extent. Traditional blues players often used their slide on their pinky, perhaps not because of technical considerations, but perhaps more because almost all slides were made from beer bottlenecks, sawed off (hence the term bottleneck). Such bottles often had quite narrow ne...

Media Length: 4:55

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Instructor: Richard Lundmark Level: Beginner Topic: Reference Style: Blues

Excerpt: In this segment we discuss the open D-tuning and how this is used in slide guitar playing. We also discuss the issues with tuning the major third to equal temperament pitch, or to a harmonically correct pitch.

Media Length: 4:57

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Instructor: Richard Lundmark Level: Beginner Topic: Reference Style: Blues

Excerpt: In this part we discuss how the intonation of your guitar is affected by raising the string height. As I mentioned in my setup tutorial about string height vs. intonation, the pitch of a string raised it the string height is too high, or if the truss rod has too much of a bow. The position of the fret to create the accurate pitch corresponding to our equal t...

Media Length: 3:19

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Instructor: Richard Lundmark Level: Beginner Topic: Technique Style: Blues

Excerpt: Pitch accuracy is together with correct muting the most important aspect of slide technique. Having bad pitch is like a violinist having bad pitch, it just won’t do! The similarities with violin players do not stop there. When using a slide you can basically see yourself as playing a fretless instrument, since the frets no longer serve a function for d...

Media Length: 2:42

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Instructor: Richard Lundmark Level: Beginner Topic: Technique Style: Blues

Excerpt: In this example we take the muting technique a step further by adding individual finger muting techniques in our right hand. This is the key to creating clean and singing lead lines with the slide. It will be difficult in the beginning to adjust from perhaps shaving played finger style guitar using only chords, where you actually want all the notes to ring o...

Media Length: 3:05

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Instructor: Richard Lundmark Level: Beginner Topic: Technique Style: Blues

Excerpt: In this example we are covering more strings but using the same right and left hand muting technique as in the previous examples. Try using this technique in any type of scale or arpeggio shape to further your technique.  And once again, higher string height and heavier strings do help a lot. A flatter radius fret board also helps a lot, since these hel...

Media Length: 5:24

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Instructor: Richard Lundmark Level: Intermediate Topic: Technique Style: Any Style

Excerpt: This final chapter deals with some more experimental slide techniques. Many slide players play slide above the range of the fret board to access notes normally unavailable for them. Duane Allman, Jeff beck, Derek Trucks are some of the names. Brett Garsed is yet another. To have these notes ring out clearly you often need louder volumes and some gain. Check ...

Media Length: 6:39