Hey there, and welcome to the second part of the Terrifying Technique series.
This lesson will show you how to master another essential technique: slides. I know some people found last lesson a bit intense, so this time I'm going to ease up on the 'practice regime' side of things a little by showing you some examples that you can play that will sound musical, as well as tidbits of other folk's songs that demonstrate the technique best.
Clicking on any example headings will play the relevant music - you can also click on the notation. As always : remember to warm up before attempting any intense playing.
As most of you will already know, there are two types of slide: the legato slide and the picked slide. The basic overview of these slide techniques is at the glossary. First we'll concentrate on the legato slide...
Legato Slides
The technique is very simple to understand and far easier to perform than the picked slide... which is why I've done this first! There are three steps to the legato slide:
- Play the first note
- Slide finger up or down the string towards the destination note
- Stop sliding when you've reached the destination note.
So, with that in mind, what are the steps for the following legato slide?
|----------------|
|----sl----------|
|---5-/-9--------|
|----------------|
|----------------|
|----------------|
- Play the note at the 5th fret on the G string
- Slide your fretting finger up the string
- Stop sliding when you've reached the 9th fret.
I'm sure you all know this already but to check you're doing it right play this .wav file (23.8kb). This is the above example played at a fairly moderate speed. If you're getting it right it should sound similar.
Slides are often used to change position around the neck without leaving gaps or sounding disjointed, a good example of this would be when changing octave in lead playing:
|-------------------------------------------------|
|-----------pre-------------------pre-------------|
|------3-5---6b5-3---sl----15-17--18b17-15---sl---|
|---5---------------5-/-17-----------------17-\---|
|-------------------------------------------------|
|-------------------------------------------------|
|----------------------|
|----------pre---------|
|-----3-5---6b5-3------|
|--\5--------------5---|
|----------------------|
|----------------------|
The legato slide is particularly useful for doing very fast legato ideas and 'tricks'. One such trick is this, where very fast slides are used to 'join' notes, giving a very vocal type of sound. The key here is to maintain accuracy: hitting the right notes every time and making all the slides the same speed...
|------------------------------------|
|---12\8-8/10-10\5-5/8-8\3-3/5-5\1---|
|------------------------------------|
|------------------------------------|
|------------------------------------|
|------------------------------------|
The legato slide is also very useful for providing contrast within a melody. The following short extract is taken from Steve Vai's 'The Crying Machine'. Here the slides contrast with the string bend motif. However, almost all of Steve's songs could have been used examples!
|----------------------------------------------|
|---8b10-8b10-8--7--8p7--sl--------sl----sl----|
|-----------------------9-/-11-\-7-/-11-11\4---|
|----------------------------------------------|
|----------------------------------------------|
|----------------------------------------------|
An almost 'subconscious' but very effective use of slides is sliding up to a note from nowhere. I find myself doing this all the time, it often helps to ease the impact of a note or provide additional interest. I slide from approximately five frets below the destination note, although this increases as the destination fret moves up the neck. This is something that comes only with practice, the key here is 'blurring' the starting note - the starting note is not important, only the slide itself and the destination note.
|----------------------|
|---/8p7----sl---------|
|--------9-7-\-5-------|
|----------------------|
|----------------------|
|----------------------|
The reverse of the previous example is also possible, sliding down to a note from nowhere. This is a little bit more tricky as the 'source note' is harder to hide. With practice it provides an interesting and unusual effect.
|----------------------|
|---\8p7----sl---------|
|--------9-7-\-5-------|
|----------------------|
|----------------------|
|----------------------|
This is technique that I like a lot and one which you don't here too often. In this example you perform a legato slide and bend the destination note. The nice thing about this is that there are dozens of different ways to play both slide and bend and this is a good one just to sit down for half an hour and play around with.
|----sl----------------|
|---5-/-10-b-12--------|
|----------------------|
|----------------------|
|----------------------|
|----------------------|
Picked Slides
The picked slide is the usually the harder of the two sides for the beginner to perform. The main reason for this is not that the technique itself it difficult, rather that it's hard to describe and hard to get your head around initially. As with the legato slide, however, there are really only three things to remember:
- Play the first note
- Slide your finger up or down the string to the target note
- When you reach the target note, pick it.
The problem most people have when learning this technique is they don't pick the destination note immediately. Listen to the following two examples and hear what I mean:
|-----------|
|-----------|
|---5-/-9---|
|-----------|
|-----------|
|-----------|
The Right Way - 19.9kb wav
The Wrong Way - 20.2kb wav
As you can hear, in the second example there is a gap before the second note is picked. So what's being played here is more like:
|-------------|
|-----sl------|
|---5-/-9-9---|
|-------------|
|-------------|
|-------------|
Which is obviously not what we want!
I think the best way to look at a picked slide is that all your doing is playing two notes in a row with the same fretting finger without taking it off the string. Try it, it really does help to grasp this concept if you look at it this way.
Having said that, I'll show you an example where it doesn't pay to think of the picked slide in this way! We know that a picked slide is just two picked notes joined by a slide, yes? Well, if we vary the length of the slide (i.e. how long it takes) we can do something like this:
|----------------------------------------|
|----------------------------------------|
|----------------------------------------|
|---2-/-5--4-/-7--5-/-9--7-/-10--9-/-12--|
|----------------------------------------|
|----------------------------------------|
When you play this you'll notice that the slides between the pairs notes take up more time than the note we're sliding from! This is perfectly acceptable, it's just a matter of interpretation. If we wanted to write this down 'better' it'd probably look like this:
The thing to remember is that the notes should be at the right pitch and start at the right time, the slide itself is a matter of personal preference - make this part of your 'music personality', like your vibrato or the individual way you palm mute or whatever. Experiment with slides, start a slide slowly and then speed up or vice versa. Remember: Your slide must end when it's time for the second note to picked!
This example is a similar idea to the legato slide Example Two. In this example we have a similar bluesy/pentatonic idea, then we jump an octave up the neck. Both slides are used for this 'position hopping' and both have their uses.
|-----------------------------------|
|-----------------------------------|
|-------3-/-15----------15~---------|
|---3h5--------17p15-17-----17~~~---|
|-----------------------------------|
|-----------------------------------|
This sounds quite basic when played once solo. But listen to the lick played over the chords C/G/E/F - this is an example of how a slide idea like this could become the 'theme' to a song, although, admittedly, not a particularly great song!
|------------------------|
|------------------------|
|---5-/-7\5-/-7\5-/-7----|
|------------------------|
|------------------------|
|------------------------|
Here's the riff version - 76.9kb mp3.
This is a similar idea to Legato Slides' Example Seven, but using the picked slide. A picked slide is executed as usual, but the destination note is picked as an 'artificial harmonic' and bent up a tone.
|------------------|
|------------------|
|---5-/-12-b-14----|
|------------------|
|------------------|
|------------------|
Licks like this can be effective in 'reverse', a downward slide followed by a bend. For example, try sliding down three frets and bending the destination note up three frets.
Where Next?
After playing around with ideas like these, try developing some of your own slide licks based around chord tones or scale notes or whatever. An example of a chordal slide idea is example six:
Here we slide around between C and E, note the chords we play:
| Slides |
Rhythm |
Resulting Chord |
| C & E |
C/G |
C Major |
| C & E |
G/D |
C add9 |
| C & E |
E/B |
C Maj7-5 |
| C & E |
F/C |
F Maj7-3 |
See Legato Slides' Example Three for an example of a traditional scale-based slide idea.
Practicing
I think a good way to practice slides is to use a silly little 'practice algorithm' like this:
- Starting Fret = 1. Destination Fret = 2.
- Slide from Starting Fret to Destination Fret
- Advance Destination Fret by 1, repeat from step two until playing a octave
- Advance Starting Fret, go to step two
I'm sure that's confused the hell out of you, so here's the tab for this exercise... :-)
|---------------------------------------------------------|
|---1/2-1/3-1/4-1/5-1/6-1/7-1/8-1/9-1/10-1/11-1/12-1/13---|
|---------------------------------------------------------|
|---------------------------------------------------------|
|---------------------------------------------------------|
|---------------------------------------------------------|
Obviously, for this to be a complete workout you have to do the opposite for downwards slides; i.e. start at fret twenty (say) and slide down one fret, then two etc. You may also feel the need (?) to perform these exercises on different strings, which I thoroughly recommend!
That's it for this lesson, I hope you've found it useful or that it at least gave you some ideas to expand upon. As always feedback is welcome, so mail me if you have any comments, criticism or corrections.
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