[iangmangardner]

Hello! Did anyone see Johnathan Ross last night on TV? (English show) There was a guy on it from USA called Rocco Deluca who p[layed slide guitar. Does anyone know what tuning your guitar has to be in to play in this style? Also is anyone out there a fan of this guy, as I thought it was a bit basic?

Cheers Ian...

[Crawdaddy]

I personally haven't heard of Rocco Deluca so I'm not familiar with which particular tunings he likes to use. However slide guitar can be far from being basic, it can in fact be very intricate. Slide guitar is mostly but not always played in open tunings and when you first begin to play in open tunings it is like opening up a pandoras box in so far as the possibilities go as to what you can create musically. Its like learning your instrument all over again but in a different way than before. I would recommend to anybody that feels that their playing has become a bit stale or that is even just starting out learning guitar that they try out some open tunings for a while, with or without using an actual slide. The most common open tunings that are used are open A, open G, open E and open D. These are not the only ones, there a quite a number of others but if you can find your way around in one of these tunings then you will without too much difficulty be able to play in the others listed as well. As I said to begin with its like a whole new learning experience, one that never really ends no matter how much you play but the payoff is that your own appreciation of playing the guitar in general makes learning what you can about playing slide a worthwhile endeavour.