How to Use a Slide on Guitar

The blues and many country western songs take advantage of the slide to achieve the bending, swooning quality of tone. A slide is merely a cylinder, typically made of glass or metal, that you wear over one finger and slide over the strings. You can wear the slide on any of your four fingers. Slides are used on acoustic and electric guitars and offer a lot of opportunity for experimenting. Read on to learn how to use a slide on guitar.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Try various slides made of different materials to find the sound you want to achieve. Glass slides provide a sharper, higher tone, while metal gives you a warmer sound. The heavier the slide, the deeper the tone will be.

2. Make slides from materials found around your house. Older blues guitar players used bottles made of glass, thus the other term for slide guitar playing--bottlenecking. An old prescription bottle, a piece of pipe or a glass chemistry tube can work as a slide. You'll also be considered more original with a homemade slide.

3. Choose which finger to use for the slide based on what else you plan to play in the same song. You can't take the slide off to pick and play notes in the middle of the song. Most musicians use the pinkie finger, leaving the other three fingers free to play frets. If you are playing on open tuning, you may want to go for the heavy slide sound by wearing the slide on the pointing finger or middle finger.

4. Play a slide on old guitars with high action when you are learning. Use the off-notes as part of your sound effects. To get a cleaner sound from a slide, though, the higher the strings are off the neck of the guitar, the easier it will be to develop a technique, free of muddled tones.