 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and I'm here today with MGRmusic.com and in this video we're going to talk about six tips on how you guys can start playing slide guitar. All of the tones in this video that you're hearing today are coming from the Studio 10 6L6 which I've got running on the Crunch channel. The amp is mic'd with the Luit Audio LCT 440 condenser microphone and I'm also using the Blackstar Carion guitar. So the first tip to get started with the slide guitar is making sure your guitar is set up correctly. So for this I've got this guitar in open G tuning so if you don't know about open G tuning check out the introduction to open G tuning video on the Blackstar YouTube channel. This gives some basic tips and advice on how to get your guitar into open G tuning. Just to recap, open G tuning from low to high is DGDGBD. The reason that most people play open tunings when they play slide guitar is because it does tend to stack certain intervals from chords and scales on top of each other and when you're wearing a slide on your finger that makes it a little bit easier. Once you've gotten your guitar into open G tuning the other important thing is to set up the guitar the right way. Now on this guitar I've raised the action just a little bit. I've got it set to about a 2mm measurement at the 12th fret. Now the height of the action on a guitar for slide is a total personal preference. I go for 2mm at a measurement at the 12th fret because I like that sort of ability to play slide. It's high enough for slide but it's low enough that I can play regular stuff as well. Many players who play slide will have a guitar that's dedicated to that. Maybe you'll go up to about 3mm on the action there maybe even a little bit further. The other consideration is that heavy gauge strings also help. So the heavier the gauge strings and the higher the action the easier it is to play slide. This is because the strings will have more natural tension and they won't bend as much under the weight of a slide. So next up we've got to choose a slide. So I've got two different slides here in my hand one of which is ceramic and the other one is metal. If you go to your local guitar store you'll see slides in all different shapes and sizes and materials. Each material has a slightly different tone. A metal one for instance is very bright and metallic whereas a ceramic slide has a little bit more of a warm sort of deeper sound. I personally love the sound of a ceramic slide it's really smooth compared to a metal slide which can be a little bit harsher. Slides will also come in glass and you can even get some plastic ones as well so try out a few different ones and see what fits you. The other thing is the size of the slide so this one is slightly shorter but it's got a fatter wall compared to this one which is longer but it has a thinner wall. Now again this is all personal preference depending on what feels right. Many people will go for a slide on their third finger so this is a great example because that fits my third finger perfectly. This one on the other hand is slightly shorter and it actually has a bigger opening because I tend to wear slides on my middle finger when I play. That's just because I like to be able to play regular things along with my slide playing. So the road to choosing the right slide is a totally personal journey. Try a bunch of different ones out if you can. Listen to it and feel it and see what sounds best and what feels best. So the third tip is the technique of playing slide. So I'm going to be wearing my slide on my middle finger for this. You can wear your slide on whatever finger you want. The middle finger is just my preferred finger. So the first part of the technique is learning how to correctly intonate the slide notes we play. So let's just say I wanted to play the third fret on the G. If I was playing this conventionally I would simply just put my finger in place and pick the string. But this is slightly different when it comes to playing slide and the reason for that is the note is no longer at that point where my finger is. When we think about the layout of a fretboard and how a fretboard works the note is generated from the point where the string actually touches the fret. So wherever I put my finger within that fret the string is still touching the fret wire at this point. So that means for playing slide the slide actually has to be above the fret wire in order to generate the same note. So if I wanted to play that third fret on the G with a slide then the slide wouldn't be at the point where my finger would normally be. You can hear those are two different pitches. The slide actually has to be directly above the fret wire. So this can take a little bit of getting used to because instead of going where your finger would naturally go you do have to shift it forward a little bit trying to get the bottom part of the slide directly above the fret wire. A great way you can train yourself to do this is to just pick two different notes. So I'll use the third and fifth frets on the G. Now those notes are A sharp and C. So what I could do is I could turn on a guitar tuner and I could literally watch the tuner as I play those notes of the slide. That will really allow me to intonate the position. So I'm going for this perfect point right above the fret wire. You also don't want to push down too hard when you play with slides. You just want to rest the slide on the string. If you push down too hard you're going to rattle the string off the fret. So you're literally just resting it on top of the string as if you're going to mute the string normally. The other thing you want to do when it comes to technique is use whatever fingers are behind the slide to mute any strings that you're not playing. So if I play a slide note with my fingers away from the guitar like this there are actually loads of open strings there that can resonate along with the note that I'm playing. So for instance if I just turn the volume up and strum behind the slide there's all these different frequencies which sound pretty cool sometimes but most of the time you don't really want them in there. So what you want to do is take whatever fingers are behind the slide and basically mute the strings with that finger. So I've just got my first finger here touching the strings behind where my slide is. And it's really good practice to get used to just sliding those notes back and forth like I did there as well. Just to get used to moving that muting finger and obviously not pressing down too hard with the slide. You want the slide to just glide over the string. The fourth tip is going to be how to play a minor pentatonic scale with a slide in open G tuning. Now obviously because you've put the guitar in open G you've completely moved some of the notes on the fretboard and obviously we're playing with the slide so it doesn't really lend itself that well to playing certain scale shapes. But the great news is in this tuning the scale has been remapped in quite a friendly way. So let me just play this without the slide first of all so you can see. So we're starting on the fifth fret here of the low D string. This is our G note. So I'm going for G because we're playing in open G. On the G string then which was previously our A we're playing the third and fifth frets. On the D string I'm playing the open string then the third and fifth. On the G I'm playing the third and fifth again. On the B I'm playing the third. Now at this point I've got a choice to make. I can either play the sixth fret on the B or I can skip to the third fret on the E because they're the same note because of the tuning. Whichever one of those you use it's up to you and then you land on the fifth fret of the high D. So once you've got that mapped out with your fingers then we start to play it with a slide. Now this is where that idea of open tunings and the notes being aligned on top feature that comes in a lot of use for us. I'm starting with a fifth fret on the low D. Third and fifth on the G. Open third and fifth on the D. Third and fifth on the G. Third on the B and then third and fifth on the high D. Now like I said on that B string I could go to the sixth fret instead. That's just down to your own personal preference about which way you want to play that scale. So once you know a scale shape you can then start trying to improvise and play around with the idea of forming some lead lines in an open tuning. The fifth tip you may have seen me do a little bit of there is vibrato. Vibrato is slightly different with a slide compared to conventional guitar playing so if I was doing vibrato on a note with a fretted note I would move the string in an up and down manner like so. This is slightly different with a slide because I'm not actually pushing down on the string so once I've got my slide at my peak of intonation which is right above that fret to actually apply vibrato I actually need to move away from the intonation point so I actually need to go up and down on the string. Now you can vary the amount of vibrato by how far you go away from that intonation point both left and right. This is pretty tricky because obviously you always have to come back to that perfect point at the end. What many players will do is like I did there they'll slide to the note first and then add the vibrato second. If you try and apply the vibrato straight away it can make the accuracy a little tricky to really nail down. If you want a subtle vibrato you just need to move it a little bit up and down and if I really want my vibrato to be extreme I'm gonna go further to the left and the right. The final quick tip for getting started with slide guitar is the fact that you can play major chords with your slide so in the introduction to open G less and I told you that you can play major chords with one finger. You can actually do this with a slide as well this is a really cool way to build some really cool bluesy riffs so instead of placing your finger as a bar across the fret you'd simply place the slide across the top of the fret at that intonation point on whatever chord you're trying to hit. So if I start by playing all the strings open that's gonna be my G major. If I land the slide above the third fret that's gonna be my B flat major. Fifth fret is gonna be my C major. So I could come up with a little riff there just by using the slide. You can get quite creative with that and you can have some real fun. You don't always have to just strum it you can play some arpeggiated notes as well which is pretty cool. There's all sorts of possibilities you could even start to integrate that with some of the scale pans and put some lead licks in there as well as you start to feel more confident in your slide playing. So there you go there are six tips and tricks to get you started with your slide guitar. It's a very fun style of playing but it does take a little getting used to because you do have to do some remapping because of the tunings and also you have to rethink about where your accuracy lies because you've got to get the slide right above that fret. So don't worry if you can't really nail it straight away it does take a while to tune that intonation in but once you get it it will be great. Thank you guys so much for watching I hope you've enjoyed this video let us know down below in the comments what you thought and what other topics you'd like to see us talk about in future lesson videos and don't forget to check out the Blackstar Amplification YouTube channel for more lessons just like this and if you're looking for a guitar teacher please head over to mgrmusic.com check out the music teacher database there is a great network of teachers all around the UK waiting to help you guys out. Thanks for watching and we'll see you soon.