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Any slide players here?


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I’ve never really experimented with slide playing but I think I want to. Anyone here do a lot of slide playing?  Favorite tunings: open E, open D, etc? Favorite slide materials: brass, ceramic, glass/bottleneck, etc?

Any other advice or tips?

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I play in standard mostly, as far as what type of slide, that is for you do decided. I would start with a Dunlop 213, the bottles are a little wobbly to start out with. I use the Dunlop and the Billy Gibbons Bottle, and last but not least the Joe Perry. Three different flavors and they have the plus and minus. I just received the Rich Robinson Brass Slide and that lasted about 2 minutes. It was really fancy, but heavy. I also tried the fancier boutique slides, but I didn't like the surface feel and the unevenness of the glass. 

Just try it, you have to get pass being able to just get the thing on the strings without deafng a cat. 

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I have fun with it. As for materials, they offer different sounds. I like glass and ceramic slides. My favorites are a glass slide and the Dunlop MudSlide on short scale guitars, and the Joe Perry Boneyard on long scale guitars (because it has a pronounced mid-range bump to it). 

Practice sliding in and out of any given fret on each string while using your picking hand's fingers to mute the strings your are not playing. That's the trick to playing cleanly, aside from having your action high enough where you won't slam into each fret with the slide as you move up and down the neck.

Keeping your action on the guitar you're going to play slide with, between 3 and 4/64ths at the twelfth fret, allows enough clearance for the slide, and low enough to play well traditionally.

All of the open tunings can be a lot of fun. I like Open E and G. I rarely tune to open G though, because if you use standard tuning, your D, G and B strings are already tuned to open G, and you can cover a lot of territory just with those three strings alone. That's what Warren Haynes and many others do playing live.

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When I first started playing slide I didn’t know there was open tunings... still play in standard tuning. I prefer ceramic but a mike stand or a beer bottle have more effect.

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18 hours ago, gtrdaddy said:

Practice sliding in and out of any given fret on each string while using your picking hand's fingers to mute the strings your are not playing. That's the trick to playing cleanly, aside from having your action high enough where you won't slam into each fret with the slide as you move up and down the neck.

Every time I ever tried to play slide, the banging against the fretboard was my main problem with trying to decide if I should use an open tuning or not a close second.

 

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Playing slide well is an art. The guys that can do it have my utmost respect. Plus, they're really fun to watch. Guys like Sonny Landreth take it to a whole 'nother amazing level, as does our own Geoff Hartwell.

I had a lathe guy at work turn one out of stainless steel and it was just OK (heavy), but my favorite is the Dunlop 218, a short thick-walled glass jobby that - with 3 thin strips of foam tape - fits my really bent pinky finger perfectly. I searched a looong time before finding the one, so try a bunch. At our last jam somebody started playing 'One Way Out' and a shot glass was the only thing within reach. Kinda surprised myself a little.....

Also, I typically use my fingers to pick while using a slide, mostly for palm muting but also to catch a quick note on another string here or there.

That's the cool thing about slide - as long as it sounds the way YOU want it to, there's no right or wrong way. Use anything that feels good.

ETA: Pitch. Listen to what's going on and play to pitch. It's easy to sound like a cat with its tail stuck in a door when you get lazy or sloppy. You gotta hit the note. Just listen to the end of 'Layla' for an example. There's a few cringers there.

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I cut a piece of copper tubing. My personal favorite tone. I have glass, ceramic etc but I keep coming back to the copper.

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Gtrdaddy gave spot on advice.

I play slide in standard, open G, open A, and open E.  A is my fave cause it actually sounds tighter. Often in standard though. Using the b & e strings work ala open E while in standard and the b-g-d strings work like they do in open G. You’ll know when you hit a wrong note. Listen to classic era Stones with Mick Taylor or current day Greg Martin for slide mastery. Oh, and that Roy Rogers guy is a monster.

Slide material?? I like them all, but it depends on what sounds good on the guitar and amp combo on that day. That said, I like copper tubing, Dunlop simple chrome from the 70s, The Mudslide And especially the Boneyard. Glass sometimes.

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Thank you for the kind words hamerhead!

Slide is a huge part of my playing, and I’ve been lucky to play with the best in the world, and steal everything I could, haha.

One of my proudest life accomplishments is Sonny Landreth quoted as saying, “Geoff Hartwell, he’s my hope for the future”.

I produced a DVD of slide lessons that I licensed to Truefire, here’s a snippet:

 

I still have a bunch of copies of the original DVD, if anybody wants a copy I’ll send you one for $20 shipped, email me at [email protected].

😊

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9 hours ago, hamerhead said:

Playing slide well is an art. The guys that can do it have my utmost respect. Plus, they're really fun to watch. Guys like Sonny Landreth take it to a whole 'nother amazing level, as does our own Geoff Hartwell.

I had a lathe guy at work turn one out of stainless steel and it was just OK (heavy), but my favorite is the Dunlop 218, a short thick-walled glass jobby that - with 3 thin strips of foam tape - fits my really bent pinky finger perfectly. I searched a looong time before finding the one, so try a bunch. At our last jam somebody started playing 'One Way Out' and a shot glass was the only thing within reach. Kinda surprised myself a little.....

Also, I typically use my fingers to pick while using a slide, mostly for palm muting but also to catch a quick note on another string here or there.

That's the cool thing about slide - as long as it sounds the way YOU want it to, there's no right or wrong way. Use anything that feels good.

ETA: Pitch. Listen to what's going on and play to pitch. It's easy to sound like a cat with its tail stuck in a door when you get lazy or sloppy. You gotta hit the note. Just listen to the end of 'Layla' for an example. There's a few cringers there.

Hamerhead’s ETA is spot on. Slide is hard to get right. Sometimes I’ll be recording and think I have THE take playing a slide solo and then ugh it is not in tune with the recording. This most often occurs when I am trying to play something too fast. Precision with a slide is critical.

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  • 4 months later...

What setup advice for playing both slide and regular on one guitar? Raise the action a bit, any numbers?

Seems easier on my Les Paul than Studio Custom. Yet to check the action measurement, the feel fairly close. 

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On 6/15/2019 at 9:46 PM, geoff_hartwell said:

Thank you for the kind words hamerhead!

Slide is a huge part of my playing, and I’ve been lucky to play with the best in the world, and steal everything I could, haha.

One of my proudest life accomplishments is Sonny Landreth quoted as saying, “Geoff Hartwell, he’s my hope for the future”.

I produced a DVD of slide lessons that I licensed to Truefire, here’s a snippet:

 

I still have a bunch of copies of the original DVD, if anybody wants a copy I’ll send you one for $20 shipped, email me at [email protected].

😊

I can especially recommend Geoff‘s course. Bought the DVD many years ago. It explains slide playing from the ground up. 

For years, slide playing never really jumped on me. Just recently I enjoyed very much playing with compressor on. It nicely helps on sustaining tone. I‘m using brass all along. Rings like a bell. Playing standard tuning.

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On 6/14/2019 at 10:41 PM, Dutchman said:

When I first started playing slide I didn’t know there was open tunings... still play in standard tuning. I prefer ceramic but a mike stand or a beer bottle have more effect.

Doesn't hold Jeff Beck back any!  Good for you.  The rare times I play slide, it's in standard tuning...

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A big +1 for Geoff Hartwell's DVD. I fooled around with slide but didn't really grasp the basic mechanics until I got that.  Now I understand them even if I don't get them right half the time :D 

General stuff:  Standard, open G and open D are where I usually live, with open G getting most of the time.  I use a piece of bronze (not brass) tubing that is a cut-off from a pipe made for the innards of an Apache attack helicopter.  That don't mean shit but it's sort of the technological opposite of a cut off wine bottle.  It just happens to fit my third finger perfectly and has just the right mass.  I went through a drawerful of glass and brass slides before that.  I use my third finger, don't know why but it allows me to damp in front of and behind the slide and grab the extra note here and there.

I typically will keep a guitar around with a smidge higher action and one gauge heavier strings than I typically use.  Cuts down on fret rattle and makes things a little livelier tone-wise.

Over to you, Chet.

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Got into slide unintentionally years ago. It was a 3 guitar band, the other two had worked out their parts so I picked up the slide cause I couldn't think of anything else. I always use standard tuning and have all guitars more or less set up the same, however it depends on fingerboard radius too, the flatter the radius the harder I find it to play single notes cleanly. favourite slide is the glass Rock Slide which has great weight and tone and fits my finger really well.

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On 10/29/2019 at 2:50 PM, it's me HHB said:

My advise is dont use a super lightweight slide. It has to have its own mass to some extent imo

I would generally support this advise. However, recently I came across on one of these https://www.thimbleslide.com/ and must say it works fantastic.

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