Some might argue that playing blues slide guitar is relatively simple, but I think it is one of the more challenging things for people of all levels of guitar playing. While I m not an expert on slide guitar, I do have skill at playing blues slide guitar so I can share some of what I know about this style.
The first thing you should know about playing slide guitar (particularly delta blues slide guitar) is that it is typically in a different tuning.
The most common tuning for slide guitar is open G tuning which is from low to high D-G-D-G-B-D. So if you re in standard tuning E-A-D-G-B-E low to high, then you tune the low E down to a D, the A down to a G, then the high E down to a D. This is pretty simple and when you do this you ll hear that playing all the open strings will give you a G chord.
As a side note, this is the tuning used in the song Travelling Riverside Blues by Led Zeppelin, and you can hear this tuning on just about any delta blues style song.
Once you tune your guitar, then just mess around with the slide, and I think you ll find you can have some fun sliding up adn down the neck. Keeping the slide right over the top of the frets is what you should concentrate on to make sure you re in tune, but the most important thing to use when playing slide is your ears.
You need to listen closely to make sure your intonation is correct. It s a lot harder then it seems at first!
You can also solo in standard tuning but this is much more challenging then open tuning.
Freebird by Lynyrd Skynyrd is probably the most well known standard tuning slide solo, but I recently purchased an instructional video by Brett Garsed called Rock Improvisation Techniques and he demonstrates some pretty amazing slide techniques as well. Check out Brett at his website www.brettgarsed.
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