I think the best way to learn slide is to learn songs. A person learns allot from the differences between songs.
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Duane and Ry, Johnny Winter were my favorites back in the day. Charley Parr is a fine slide player and one guy I would make an effort to see play live and hopefully I'll have that opportunity sometime.
Developing a good vibrato will sound like you're more in tune. BTW It's been said that Duane Allman learned to play slide after listening to a Taj Mahal record released in 1967 featuring Jesse Ed Davis on slide and Ry Cooder on rhythm guitar and it's one the first records I ever bought. |
[QUOTE=JonPR;7418100]My basic slide tips - FWIW - are:
4: watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdgrQoZHnNY (open G) That Son house video is amazing, but I can't imagine learning how to get even close to this kind of playing. If you want to try, the following clip is much easier to follow and to understand the lyrics. Plus, the guy proves that you don't need a $4,000 National to get a decent resonator tone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGXthQhkthE (Sorry, I have never learned how to embed a video). The Son House clip made me think of the way blues lyrics are sometimes treated on liner notes. It has always been amusing/annoying to me. I can picture some young white dude in Boston or NYC writing down the song titles, etc. to go to the printer. Some examples: There's a Muddy Waters song which says "Can't get no grinding from the mill", a reference to a grist mill. (I think it's a metaphor for something salacious). The album cover had the word Mill as "meal". Granted, that's about how Muddy pronounced it, but the correct word is obvious from the lyrics. There's a Lightnin' Hopkins song titled on the album as "Fishin' Clothes". The song is about him being so poor he didn't have "sufficient clothes". I have an Eric Clapton songbook (one of those expensive slick productions) in which a line is printed that he's so poor he has to "rob the blind". The original old version by the authentic bluesman (May have been "Walkin' Blues") said "ride the blinds", which I learned referred to a part of the undercarriage of a boxcar where hobos would ride when they couldn't get inside. When I listened to Clapton's version after seeing the printed lyrics, he clearly got it right as "ride the blinds". Not really a rant, just interesting blues trivia. BTW, the line "when I got there she was layin' on the coolin' board" refers to the practice of putting a body on a board, or table for it to cool after death. Usually the board was perforated and may have had ice underneath which slowed down decomposition. Probably only in rural funeral homes a hundred years ago. The other line that's hard to understand is "got a letter this mornin", reckon how it read?, Hurry hurry, the one you love is dead" The word reckon was definitely used that way when I was growing up in the South in the 50's. Sorry this is a little off the subject, but since I'm the OP I guess it's okay to hijack my own thread! Now I've got to go put on my fishin' clothes and go rob some blind people... |
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My first lap steel was an old 50s plywood Silvertone acoustic, which had a warped neck that I picked up for cheap. I put a nut riser on it and off I went. |
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FYI if you still want to be able to fret, you don't need to raise the string much. I can play bottleneck on my fingerpicking setup guitars, but have to be careful not to bonk the frets. I do have one guitar with slightly higher strings. But not much higher as I still fret notes as well as play bottleneck. Experiment with putting a strip or two cut from a business card underneath the nut. Also bump the 1st string a gauge or two, for better tone and to support the slide. |
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"Vincent Black Lightning?" Shakespeare yes, but also a longstanding British motorcycle maker that RT would be referencing. Ariel Cycles |
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https://www.diamondbottlenecks.com/ You can also put something like painters tape inside the barrel of the slide to reduce the inner diameter. |
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With electric you have lots of options to get the sustain you want if that's what you want. Lowell George's secret was lots of compression. He would be likely to get that sound even with a lightweight pill bottle slide ala Duane Allman. On an acoustic setup for slide I've actually come to like a ceramic or even rough finished "bone" ceramic slide a lot of the time. Doesn't sound like metal or glass, has its own thing. The rough finish is great for when you want (rather than want to avoid) the gritty sound of slide on the strings. Another thing I've been trying lately is shorter slides. A couple years back I noticed on a video linked here that Fred McDowell used very short slides, so I've been giving that a try. Makes it easier to get a ground-bass drone going for that sort of thing. Other than the player feel and control, I'm not sure that the mass of the slide really contributes all that much to the sound. Metal or glass sound different, and it's likely even that different metals or even types of glass might make a timbral contribution, but the mass itself is likely more of how it responds to the player's technique controlling it. |
The mass / density of any slide will mainly affect sustain ~ if you slide up to a note and hold the slide on that note, the slide with heavier mass will sustain the note longer 👍
Slide On! Ian. |
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