Slide Guitar Basics

The expressive sound of slide guitar can be heard in many styles of music, but it’s most often associated with the blues. From originators such as Robert Johnson and Elmore James to modern players such as Bonnie Raitt and Derek Trucks, nearly all blues players incorporate slide into their playing. You can also hear slide in the music of countless rock and folk players, including George Harrison, Leo Kottke, Mark Knopfler, and Jack White.

Even if you’re a beginner, you can start playing slide with just a bit of practice and know-how. This guide covers the basic techniques you need to know, including setting up and tuning your guitar for slide, playing chords and melodies with the slide, string damping, vibrato, and how to achieve super-smooth slide sounds. You’ll also learn how to use tunings and the bottleneck to play slide.

To play slide, you will probably need to make some adjustments to your guitar. This is mainly because most guitars are set up for standard styles and tend to have a low action (the distance between the fretboard and strings). If you try to play slide with a low action, you’ll find that the bottleneck (the slide itself) will bump on the frets and press the strings against the fretboard, creating unpleasant sounds in the process.

For successful results, you need to have the action on your guitar set higher, which involves slightly raising all of the strings off the fretboard. Your local music store can do this for you. A higher action prevents unwanted noise and allows you to slide the bottleneck around without pressing down on the strings. A set of heavier-gauge strings will also make it easier to produce a better tone and maintain the high tension that slide demands.

The first slide players used broken-off glass bottlenecks to play slide. Bottlenecks (also called slides) now come in many shapes and sizes and are typically made of glass or metal. Most slides are usually about 4" long. Shorter slides, like those that are 2" long, are handy for playing single melodic lines in standard tuning. Try some out at your local music store. Pick the type that feels most comfortable and produces the sort of sounds you’d like to create.

Photographs of famous slide players reveal that players don’t all wear the slide on the same finger of the fretting hand. Some use the little finger, some the 3rd, and some the 2nd. It depends partly on how it feels to you and how many fingers you might want to use for chords or single-note runs without the slide. If you don’t have a strong preference, begin with the little finger. Using that finger allows your other three fingers to play fretted notes, mute, and so on.