How to Play Slide Guitar: Bars & Picks

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village, I'm Reno McCormick and I'm here to tell you about playing the Dobro today. Now we are going to talk about the tools we need to play the Dobro. First off you need most people need a thumb pick made of plastic and two metal finger picks. You put them on underneath your finger. I've seen people put them on this way. They don't go that way, they go underneath. And you play with a thumb forward and pull with our fingers. We'll do rolls, we'll do different things, but that's basically what we have. And then we move to our bar. Which is just about a pound. And it's called a Stephens Steel. Steel players will use a bullet, a round bullet. This is made for Dobro mostly, because it has a squared off end that we can pull the strings so we can get extra notes without having to play with our fingers. So we'll hammer on and we'll pull off and get three notes for the price of one. That's what we do on Dobro; we cheat every chance we get."