Slide guitarists most commonly use ‘open tunings’ - This means that the strings are tuned so that the open strings form a chord (and therefore so does a single barre at any given fret). Ideally, you’ll have a battered old cheap acoustic somewhere which you can then give a permanently high action and use it for slide playing without interfering with your main guitar and primary setup. The gap between the fretboard and the strings is bigger) to maximize this window. For this reason, many slide guitarists use guitars with a deliberately higher action (i.e. There’s a small window between not touching the string at all and pressing the string down onto the fretboard, where good slide playing happens. The right technique almost imagines the fretboard isn’t there at all - you’re just moving the slide along a string suspended in mid-air, with no fretboard. If the string makes contact with the fretboard, you’ll get unwanted buzzing. The right amount of pressure is when the slide is in contact with the string, but the string is not being pressed down onto the fretboard. There’s a short answer here too - it’s about the same pressure as a natural harmonic. This has to be applied to your slide technique from the very beginning. This may not be clear if you’re just playing unaccompanied, but as soon as you’re playing over something you’ll hear it right away. It’ll only come up to correct pitch if you hold the slide further forward, right at the divide between the target fret and the next. If you play with the slide in the middle of the fret, the note will be flat (lower than the correct pitch), meaning you’ll sound out of tune. So, for the note of ‘E’ at the 5th fret on the B (2nd) string, for example, the slide should not be positioned right in the middle of that 5th fret, but on the actual fret itself, directly above that bar that divides fret 5 and fret 6. The slide should not be in the middle of the fret, but at the front end of the fret. This is probably the most common misconception about slide guitar playing. But start on finger 3 and see how it goes. It’s still strong and in control, leaves fingers 1 and 2 for normal playing, can reach up the neck and can be held steady and straight between fingers 2 and 4.Įveryone has their preferences, and if you find that you’re just inexorably drawn to using another finger, that’s okay. Wearing it on your 3rd finger is a great compromise between these two options. Essentially, wearing it on your 2nd finger (middle finger) will provide great control over the slide, and wearing it on your 4th finger (pinky) will mean you can reach a long way up the neck (especially with an acoustic or non-cutaway guitar) and have many spare fingers behind the slide for interspersing normal playing with slide playing.
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