How to Play the Slide Guitar

Slide guitar is a popular form of guitar playing used primarily in rock, blues and country. Slide guitar is often played on a lap steel guitar as well as a standard guitar. This style of guitar playing is often referred to as bottleneck playing due to the use of broken bottlenecks as a slide back in the early days of slide guitar playing. You can purchase guitar slides in local music shops, but many guitar players still use bottlenecks because they prefer the sound.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Choose the slide you want to use. You can purchase a metal finger slide. If you'd rather try a homemade slide, you could use a broken bottleneck like blues players did in the early 20th century, a Bic lighter, a Zippo lighter, or any piece of smooth metal. Any of these items are useful for slides and create different sounds.

2. Slip your finger slide over your middle finger or index finger, whichever is more comfortable for you. If you are using a lighter or a scrap piece of metal, hold the object in the hand you use to fret your guitar, curling your four fingers around it, and place it against the strings of your guitar. You can place it against one or more strings, depending upon the sound you want.

3. Strum the string or strings your slide is touching, then move the slide up and down the strings as you continue to strum. This will create a Hawaiian sound. Practice moving the slide fast and slow, reversing the direction as you strum to achieve different sounds. Apply a slight downward pressure with the slide to manipulate the pitch of the note you're playing.

4. Try creating the sound of a car or motorcycle by placing your slide on the low E string at about the third fret and sliding up (toward higher notes) the neck a couple of frets, then reversing the slide quickly and starting up the neck again. You will hear how this sounds like a car or motorcycle shifting and picking up speed.

References

• How to Play Slide Guitar (video)

Resources

• Slide Guitar for Beginners