I love slide guitar (and you can too)

seth walot

introductionMy interest in slide guitar didn’t start very epically… I had heard slide before but it wasn’t until I heard Ben Harper play slide in ninth grade that I thought of it as an instrument or technique that was still relevant to contemporary music. Years later in 2003 I got my first bright yellow lap slide. I would spend hours sitting outside of a crappy Starbucks in Napa, CA noodling with my guitar. Foolishly, I pawned that guitar and I still regret it to this day. Now that I have an electric guitar again, I am always really excited to put that thing into an open tuning and noodle some more.

Slide guitar is a very emotional style yet there are technically rigid structures defining most of where you can play with your slide. Depending on the tuning, there are only a few frets you can play so nuance and technique of the player is the most important part of the musical puzzle.

Slide. or bottleneck guitar, is played with a type of tubular slide (originally the neck of a wine bottle, but now available in a varieties of materials from glass to metal to ceramic, among others.) Instead of pressing down on a fret, you just rest the slide over the fret and slide up and down the neck, often without lifting the slide off of the strings. Traditionally, the guitar is held upright like most guitars and the slide is placed over a finger on the left hand. This also allows players to fret notes with their free fingers, creating the possibility for chords (particularly minor chords) that aren’t possible with the vertical position of the slide.

Steel guitars are usually designed to be placed flat on the players lap while sitting down. Instead of a tubular slide around the finger, the steel guitar is played with a metal rod called a steel held in the players hand. The action (how far the strings are from the fret board) is significantly higher, meaning that you can’t really use your fingers to press down on the strings. Every note is made by the sliding action of the steel.

While slides can be used on most standard guitars, there are more specialized guitars designed to really amplify the sound of the slide, like the steel guitar, resonators, dobros, and Weissenborn guitars.

Slide guitars are often tuned to an ‘open’ tuning, so that a chord will be sounded just by strumming the open strings. Popular tunings include Open D (D-A-D-A-D-F), Vestapol (D-A-D-F#-A-D), and Open G (D-G-D-G-B-D). With a capo, it is easy to switch between Open D and E and Open G and A. There are many ways to tune a guitar, just be careful about placing too much or too little strain on the neck of your guitar. Open D, Open G and Vestapol are good for many non slide-specific guitars because the strings are tuned to tensions below Standard EADGBE tuning. Leaving a guitar in Open E tuning it is possible to damage the neck of your guitar.

Open G

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NOTABLE PLAYERSCharlie Patton

To call Charlie Patton a major influence on many Delta blues players would be doing him a grave disservice. He mentored some of the original founders of the Delta blues sound, including Son House and Robert Johnson. Patton had a visceral baritone voice and a raw playing style. Patton was born in southern Mississippi in 1891. He achieved some success in the 1910s but by 1929 and 1930 Patton was the most recorded blues artist of the year. He had a reputation as a drunk and a womanizer, and his hard living ended his life too early in 1934. Check out a slower tune, ‘Banty Rooster’ to hear that slow drag sound, and then contrast that to ‘Spoonful Blues’. This guy basically invented that.

Son House was born during 1902 in Mississippi and was a protégé of Charlie Patton. He was less well known than his peers but outlived them by 50 years. After partially completing a jail sentence for killing a man in Lyon, MS, House relocated to Clarksdale where he befriended Charlie Patton. House played a very primitive sounding style of slide guitar, incorporating elements of gospel and ‘negro spirituals’. He recorded a few sides in 1930, and was recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941. It wasn’t until the 1960s, when white America began to pay more attention to the blues, that Son House rose to a higher state of fame playing many folk festivals. Often times in performance raw emotion would totally overcome the melody, enriching the emotional outpouring that comes with the blues and slide playing. Check out ‘Death Letter Blues’, ‘Pony Blues’ and for a taste of his acapella style, ‘John the Revelator’ or ‘Grinning in Your Face.’

Son house

It is said that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads in order to learn the guitar. Johnson had direct impact on many of the British bands of the 1960s and 70s including Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton. His songs ‘Dust My Broom’ and ‘Sweet Home Chicago’, among others, have been covered countless times by other artists. He was an extremely versatile player with the ability to play anything after hearing it once. He had only recorded 29 songs by the time he was lethally poisoned at age 27. His most memorable slide song was ‘Come On In My Kitchen’ effortlessly blending the tenor of the slide with the baritone of his smooth voice.

Robert Johnson

muddy waters

Muddy Waters, aptly named for the muddy creek he loved to play in as a child, was instrumental in helping to bring the Delta Blues north to Chicago. Born in 1915 in Mississippi, he was a versatile acoustic and electric player, reflecting the advent of the electric guitar in the 40s and 50s. The occurrence of distortion when an amp is turned up and the sustain of an electric guitar added a whole new dimension to slide playing and live blues performances with a full band. The sustain also added the ability for a player to pick one note and use the slide to stretch it out into a four or five note riff. The evolution from solo playing to playing with a full band had a direct and unavoidable influence over Rock and Roll Music. Check out ‘Hoochie Coochie Man.’

Duane Allmans short career had an indelible effect upon rock and roll and slide playing. He played in a few small bands in Florida, and made some appearances on some notable tracks for other artists, but in 1971 the Allman Brothers really hit the scene with their live album ‘Live from the Fillmore East’. The intro to ‘Statesboro Blues’ is probably one of the best examples of modern slide playing. Duane Allman recorded one more album for the Allman Brothers Band in 1971. During a break from recording, he was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident. Duane Allman greatly influenced Warren Haynes and basically any slide player after 1969.

duane allman

Ben Harper was the first slide player I ever heard and really paid attention to. While his music incorporates much more than the blues, his slide playing is what I am really interested in. Ben Harper often plays on a Weissenborn guitar, a lap slide built in a way that makes it impossible to play upright. Originals are very sought after because of their rarity and most contemporary lap slides are built off a Weissenborn model. Ben Harper has adapted the slide to create a new niche in rock and roll slide playing while still taking the time to pay tribute to the elder statesman of the Delta blues.

ben harper

FOR FURTHER REFERENCE...

TAMPA REDMISSISSIPPI FRED MCDOWELLBLIND BOY FULLERROBERT NIGHTHAWKELMORE JAMESJOHN LEE HOOKERJOHN FAHEYTHE YARDBIRDSJIMMY PAGEBRIAN JONESWARREN HAYNESJOHNNY WINTERBILLY GIBBONSJERRY DOUGLAS

GET STOKED AND PLAY SOME SLIDE