Question about slide guitar

[critternut]

I am in my 60s and learned guitar at age 13. It has been a part of my life. Last summer I had a bad accident and basically the end of my left index finger doesn't work properly. There is no way I can use that to fret the guitar. I had an epiphany - maybe I could learn slide. Not to be great or even good, but maybe I could at least play my guitar again. I don't know jack about slide. Can you play slide if you cannot do anything (other than possibly bar) with your index finger?

[Robin, Wales]

I'm not sure where to start with this, but the answer is "yes, you can play slide".

I lost the end of my left index finger in a rock climbing accident about 20 years ago (it seems like yesterday) - I was hit by a falling rock.

I gave my guitars away.

A few years later my youngest son started to learn to play, and I thought that I'd try bottle neck slide. It was OK. I could play stuff in open tunings. I found it quite hard to play solo pieces but, I could sit in with friends and add some slide to the mix, and that was a great feeling.

I also bought a square neck dobro. I reckoned that I could hold a dobro bar, which was the case. Again, it was really hard to play a full solo piece on the instrument. But pretty easy to add something to the mix when playing with others. Within a few months I'd joined a local amateur bluegrass band - and that was just a blast!

There was a local old time session and the leader suggested l tried playing noter drone mountain dulcimer because you can fret the tunes with a stick! I loved it! And got pretty good at it (see the tracks in my signature). This led me to old time clawhammer banjo. Hell, you just tune the darn thing to make tunes easy to play, and can get away with using just a couple of fingers!

About 5 years ago one of our bluegrass band members died and the band folded. I picked up guitar again. My style is pretty minimalist Carter style. I've found that I can use my index finger to fret (sort of) now but can't play barre chords. The capo is my friend and I don't stray far from it. But nobody notices. I use a lot of open chords and partial chords. And use hammer ons and pull offs to make it sound like I'm playing more notes than I actually am.

I've started doing open mic's and solo slots with guitar at choir concerts (I sing with a MVC). And played a 2 hour gig with a scratch band at a local venue just before Christmas (I played guitar, dobro, banjo and harmonica and sang harmony).

When I first started to play bottle neck slide I couldn't find good, cheap National style guitars in the UK. So I started a business to fill that gap. And when I started playing mountain dulcimer I found the same issue. So I started another business to import dulcimers from the small makers in the US and sell them in Europe. I ended up building student dulcimers in the UK and running workshops at music festivals - great fun!

So don't get disheartened. Your hand injury will lead you to find other musical avenues. Bottle neck slide and lap slide are a great way to go. And who knows what doors that step will open.

[perttime]

I'm no good with a slide - but SURE, you don't necessarily need many fingers to play slide. One is quite enough.

Also there are lots of, even famous, guitar players with missing, partial, or unusable fingers: https://www.thetoptens.com/music/mus...maged-fingers/

[Charlie Bernstein]

Well sure you can!

There are roundneck and lap styles, acoustic and electric, single-note and finger-style. They're all a hoot.

Here's a great video of one roundneck and one lap guitar, a.k.a. dobro: Little Martha

And here's Mick Taylor on electric, soloing at 2:50: Love In Vain

I have a squareneck Red Line dobro coming via UPS today. I'll think of you when I dig into it!

[Dave Hicks]

I had a left hand finger in a splint for a few months - I worked on lap steel. (I thought of using the splint as a slide, but the bandage blocked the strings. )

D.H.

[Robin, Wales]

I've been thinking about this today, and one thing that I forgot to mention in my post above was to try DADGAD tuning.

DADGAD has lots of potential for one, two and three finger chords up and down the fretboard. As well as playing melodies with drone backing. If you can only work with your middle, ring and pinkie fingers then DADGAD is worth having a play around with.

I used DADGAD for the accompaniment in Elzic's Farewell in my signature below. I made the chords up by ear (not difficult in DADGAD) and I'm pretty sure that my index finger wasn't involved.

[Silly Moustache]

Originally Posted by critternut

I am in my 60s and learned guitar at age 13. It has been a part of my life. Last summer I had a bad accident and basically the end of my left index finger doesn't work properly. There is no way I can use that to fret the guitar. I had an epiphany - maybe I could learn slide. Not to be great or even good, but maybe I could at least play my guitar again. I don't know jack about slide. Can you play slide if you cannot do anything (other than possibly bar) with your index finger?

Hi critternut,

There are , essentially two ways to play "slide".

One is the "bottleneck" bluesy style where a bottleneck or metal cylinder is placed, usually, over the pinky, sometimes over the ring finger, but the remaining fingers must be used for fretting as per normal.



The other style, perhaps the original style is the Hawaiian style where the thumb, index and middle fingers are used to hold a slide, with te ring and pinky seldom used. This is what most Dobro players do, and of course Weissenborn style.





Hope this helps, Andy