[taylor82]

Hey guys i'm a big allman fan, so i want to pick up slide. What songs would u guys recommend? Also when i play slide how do i stop unwanted string noise. I know Duane help his slide on his ring finger, so how the hell did he mute the strings he didnt want to ring out? Any advice would help. Thanks

[tim kilpatrick]

Hey guys i'm a big allman fan, so i want to pick up slide.  What songs would u guys recommend?  Also when i play slide how do i stop unwanted string noise.  I know Duane help his slide on his ring finger, so how the hell did he mute the strings he didnt want to ring out?  Any advice would help.  Thanks

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Rambling Man is a fairly easy song,and second is a choice now which will affect you for the rest of your playing.I place the slide on my third finger and place my index and middle on top of the slide and press down on all three finger`s.and i mute with my right hand.if you can still find a copy of august 05 guitar world mag.
Derek Tuck`s ulimate slide lesson is in thier it is worth lookin for.

[goldrush]

Duane was a great slide player; the fact that he played some of his slide tunes in standard tuning is even more remarkable. He had to be exact with his string muting since there is very little "sympathetic" notes with slide in standard tuning.

As Tim said, placing the slide on your ring finger and gently damping with your index or middle finger is a way to reduce unwanted notes. Duane undoubtedly began slide playing old blues tunes. "Rambling on My Mind" and "Dust My Broom" by Robert Johnson are two famous and fairly easy to learn slide tunes. There are dozens of others too.

I am not a great slide player, but I like to fool around in open D and G tunings. Open D in particular I like because all the strings can be employed (unlike open G which almost renders the low D [E string] useless).

[dadfad]

Duane wore the slide on his ring finger, which is okay, but it's used by guitarists who generally play with a band. The best way (my opinion and most solo slide players') (and I know there are great exceptions) is to wear it on your pinky. (I'm mentioning this because since you're just starting to play slide, now is when you'll be developing life-long habits). Wearing it on your pinky gives you one more useable finger above the slide, whether for muting or for chording/fingering, which is important for self-accompaniement in solo-playing (as in one person playing guitar, not doing "a solo" with a band back-up.) There have been a lot of good posts on tips, techniques, tunes, etc by me and others on slide. I have a few of the links saved (and there are others if you search). Here are some of them.

Slide Links

Slide A



Slide B


Slide C


Slide D


Slide E


Slide F



(Open Tunings)

Slide G


Slide H

[goldrush]

Duane wore the slide on his ring finger, which is okay, but it's used by guitarists who generally play with a band. The best way (my opinion and most solo slide players') (and I know there are great exceptions) is to wear it on your pinky. (I'm mentioning this because since you're just starting to play slide, now is when you'll be developing life-long habits). Wearing it on your pinky gives you one more useable finger above the slide, whether for muting or for chording/fingering, which is important for self-accompaniement in solo-playing (as in one person playing guitar, not doing "a solo" with a band back-up.)

I thought about this right after I posted last night. I also wear a glass slide on my pinky finger--this allows not only increased damping possibilities, but also to finger w/o the slide (such as on "Ramblin' on My Mind"). I read that Howlin' Wolf said that he wore his slide on his ring finger for extra strength, so early on I tried that. Looking back, the Wolf was not known for his slide work as much as his tremendous voice, so maybe he could get by just using his ring finger. Anyway, John, thanks for helping me remember what I forgot.

[Gfly]

I'm a bad kid, I wear my slide on my middle finger.

[dadfad]

I'm a bad kid, I wear my slide on my middle finger.

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Lots of guys wear them on other fingers and still play good slide. Hell, Mississippi Fred McDowell wore his on his index most of the time, fretting with his three fingers below the slide instead of above! Son House wore his on his ring or middle (but his style was extremely raw and primative [in a good way] and he fretted very little and never muted, except slightly with his picking hand. He just wailed away on it! Furry Lewis used a butter-knife usually, actually sliding from over the top of the neck! And like I mentioned above, if you're playing slide only, while being accompanied by another guitar or band, it really doesn't matter much. It's just that if you generally self-accompany as a solo player, and have any intention of getting into more complex combined slide/fingerstyle type tunes, you're best off getting into the habit of having three consecutive fingers to work with above the slide.

[goldrush]

I'm a bad kid, I wear my slide on my middle finger.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Lots of guys wear them on other fingers and still play good slide. Hell, my first slide teacher Mississippi Fred McDowell wore his on his index most of the time, fretting with his three fingers below the slide instead of above!

Wow talk about damping difficulties! I guess that explains McDowell's raw, earthy sound. Hey John, I have a McDowell CD in which it sounds to me like he's playing an electric. A video I have also shows him playing an electric. When (and why) did he switch from acoustic to electric? At one time I thought my CD was just from a really old and tinny-sounding recording, but I think it's just his electric guitar's tone!

[Crawdaddy]

Another beneficial reason to wear the slide on the pinky is that it allows you to literally roll the slide while it is in contact with the strings rather than just lay the slide flat and move it.If the slide is on the pinky your wrist has maximum potential to be rotated/moved in either a clockwise or anti clockwise direction.Rolling or rotating the slide while it is in contact with the strings gives the note/notes you are playing a bit of extra bite.Having the slide on the pinky prevents the notes being played being accidently muted while the slide is in contact with the strings because there are no fingers to "get in the way" as it were.If there is a need to mute the notes that could be done with the picking hand.I find in slide playing that there is far more mobility and flexibilty in the motion of the wrist if the slide is on the pinky.A rolling action of the slide on the strings greatly improves the tone of the notes played at times in a song where it is possible to play that way,you would not be trying to "roll" notes with every pick stroke though.That said, its just my opinion on extracting a bit of extra value out of the slide itself and everybody finds what works best for themselves.

[dadfad]

I'm a bad kid, I wear my slide on my middle finger.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Lots of guys wear them on other fingers and still play good slide. Hell, my first slide teacher Mississippi Fred McDowell wore his on his index most of the time, fretting with his three fingers below the slide instead of above!

Wow talk about damping difficulties! I guess that explains McDowell's raw, earthy sound. Hey John, I have a McDowell CD in which it sounds to me like he's playing an electric. A video I have also shows him playing an electric. When (and why) did he switch from acoustic to electric? At one time I thought my CD was just from a really old and tinny-sounding recording, but I think it's just his electric guitar's tone!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It's a funny thing to explain. To us younger guys, we think of the old country-blues as "acoustic blues" which of course they were. Many of these old artists who played them and recorded in the days before there even were electric guitars looked at an electric guitar from a different perspective than we do. We see them (having grown up with them) as "electric guitars" which basically are for a wholey different style of music than acoustic. You can play "electric" or you can play "acoustic." Some of them see (or saw) them in a different way, just as a simple logical innovation in just "playing guitar." Now just an easier way to get more volume, etc, etc. Like when tuner-machines went from direct 1:1 ratio to 1:4 to 1:6 or something. Several old-school-guys who "went electric" but were truly acoustic musicians included Mr. Fred, Big Joe Williams, Honeyboy Edwards, and others. To a degree, that's how John Lee Hooker also approached his music, at least his earlier stuff. So did Robert "Junior" Lockwood in his earlier stuff. I was present in a radio-studio for an interview with him in the early 90s being done by a friend on air. (I was actually able to record (pretty decently) Mr. Lockwood informally sitting around playing solo acoustic stuff before and after the interview.) In conversations with Honeyboy, his differentiation was not between electric and acoustic, but between solo and combo playing. I played with (opened for for an extended period) an old one-man-band guy (Mr. "Yer Buddy" Buddy Folkes, the Biggest One-Man-Band In Town ) who was John Lee's "partner" in the Army and in the late '40s, who saw it exactly the same way. Buddy was purely an acoustic musician stylistically but played an old late '40s Gibson electric "...so's the peoples can hear me over my drum and harmonica..." (and occasionally a keyboard too which he sat on the floor in front of him and played with popsickle-sticks taped to the soles of his shoes!).

At his home, Mr. Fred played on an old Harmony acoustic. (And as good as his recordings and videos might be, in person after "a nip or two" he could really kick some major-ass with intricate lines and very complex syncopated rhythms.)