How to Use a Pick on a Slide Guitar

Slide guitar refers to a playing technique rather than a type of guitar. A glass or metal cylinder is slipped over a finger on the fretting hand, allowing the player to slide with the ring finger and fret normally with the first two fingers.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Play chords with a strong sweep of the plectrum across the strings of the guitar forming the chord. Strings that are not part of the chord must frequently be muted in slide guitar because the chords are much more simple. This is because only two or three fingers are available with which to form chords.

2. Use alternate picking for most melody lines. An individual note is played with a downstroke of the plectrum followed by an upstroke of the plectrum to play the next note. One exception to this general rule would be when the same note needs to be played very strongly as in the case of repeated eighth notes or triplets.

3. Mute with your index finger by resting the tip against the side of the playing string that was not picked. This is especially important with slide guitar since the strings are not fretted, whereas the strings are naturally muted when they are unfretted in regular playing.

4. Pick two adjacent strings with the plectrum, pull the fretting fingers off to the open strings and slide on those strings while they are still playing. This is one of the signature techniques for the electric slide guitar sound.