Blues songs and blues guitar are notable for developing certain popular styles of guitar including the innovative style of slide guitar. You won’t learn how to play slide guitar in your first blues guitar lesson but it is a style of playing that anyone interested in learning to play blues guitar should know about.
Also known as bottleneck guitar, blues guitarist Sylvester Weaver first recorded slide guitar in 1923 and it is in that decade that slide guitar became a popular facet of the Mississippi Delta Blues. Involving the use of a “slide” to apply constant pressure to the frets and produce an uninterrupted change in pitch, the slide guitar was first known as a “bottleneck guitar” because a sawed-off bottleneck was a popular item used as a slide in the 1920s. Today, bottlenecks slides are still in use but a variety of other materials including ceramic, stainless steel, brass and chrome are used in the manufacture of slides.
These slides are generally manufactured as tubes that fit over a finger on the blues guitarist’s non-dominant hand but some guitarists still use knives or bottlenecks as slides. Regardless of the slide you choose, it’s possible to play slide guitar on any type of acoustic or electric guitar – some blues guitarists are even experimenting with using the slide guitar technique with bass guitars. Although any guitar will do, resonator and steel guitars are especially suited to this style of blues.
If you get more involved in slide guitar and practice the technique frequently, it would be a good idea to have the strings of your guitar raised off the neck more than they are for non-slide guitar. This can be done using something called an “extension nut” but it is not necessary at a basic or experimental level. But, since you’re probably at the basic level or just trying it out to see how it plays, it’s more important for you to listen to some sample slide guitar, hear how it sounds and then experiment with replicating that sound.
Listening to blues songs like Eric Clapton’s “Layla” and Elmore James’s “Dust My Broom” will give you an idea of the unique sound of slide guitar and demonstrate what you are trying to replicate. Once you know how it should sound, begin experimenting with the slide and guitar of your choice. Don’t worry if what you’re doing doesn’t sound exactly like what Elmore James is doing. One of the hardest parts of learning to play slide guitar is learning to properly mute unwanted strings. But experiment for a few hours and you’ll get the hang of controlling which strings sound and which don’t.
Frankly, hours of experimenting is what playing slide guitar as a beginner is all about. It takes time to become comfortable using the slide and controlling the sound it produces and this comfort can’t be taught in a blues guitar lesson. That being said, the above information about history, technique and even the material of the slides should help you as you begin playing slide guitar. It’s a technique with a rich history stretching back to the 1920s and the early days of Mississippi Delta Blues and it is from this rich history that you can learn how to play slide guitar.
