SLIDE LESSON PART 2 PLAYING SLIDE is almost as much about the vibe and feel, as it is about the notes or scales. Much slide playing sounds like the human voice or a harmonica. If you just played the exact notes in a melody, it would defeat the purpose of playing slide. Some techniques which give slide it's pecular sound are sliding-up and sliding-down, double-stops and chording, and vibrato. I will treat each of these as a seperate part of this lesson. IMPORTANT - Before covering these techniques, I will give some hints on practicing to get the proper intonation. This is an essential skill that is needed to make these other techniques work. First, when the slide itself must be held directly over the fret, not BEHIND the fret, as in regular playing. For the note to sound "in tune" the length of the vibrating string must be exactly the right length. With regular playing, the location of the fret determines this, since the string is "bottomed out" when you hold it against the fret and fretboard. Not so with slide. YOU must use the fret as a guide, but the exact location is determined by where you hold the slide over the fret. If you are blessed with perfect pitch, this should pose no problem. If not, I can offer hope. I considered myself "pitch-challenged" for many years, and almost gave up the guitar because of it. But I found some practice techniques that helped me improve my "ear" one-hundred-percent. Here are some things you should practice until you are satisfied with your ability to hit the "sweet-spot" over the fret. A) Play scales and common or well-known melodies, even if just using one string. The object isn't to show your virtuousity, it is to "learn" how to get the proper note. (You might want to try a little practice with a chromatic tuner hooked in the line from your guitar. Play or hold a note, then look to see how close you are to the actual pitch. This is a limited technique, don't rely on it too much.) By playing melodies you are already familar with, your ear will "seek out" the proper pitch or note to "fill in" the needed notes. Examples would include: C major scale, Do-Re-Mi, Star Spangled Banner, Elanor Rigby, Wendy (Who's tripping down - you know THAT song), Scarborough Fair, Summertime (from Porgy and Bess, great melody for slide) B) Practice a little trying to find a note - without looking. When you can slide up the high-E and nail the E at the octave fret - without looking, you know you are getting there. These are the techniques you will want to practice for that "slide" sound. 1) Sliding -up and sliding-down. Most common use is a short slide of one-half or a full-tone from the note above or below. Sometimes longer slides are used for effect, but it would be tiring to listen to a song, solo, or melody where every note was approached from half-a-string length away. However, some passages are ENDED with a long slide, same with some beginning parts. Sliding down a half- or full-step is used more in slide than in regular soloing (fretted). This gives it a sound like a harmonica, where the throat and mouth are used to vary the pitch and tone of the notes (harmonicas are not chromatic, so you get "blue notes" with your technique). You need to practice the intonation so that all notes you use are "in tune", and the ones you want to add to the solo. 2) Double-stops and chording really take advantage of the open-tuning used in most slide playing. A very common and simple lick, is to slide to one note, and once reached, pick the adjacent string, letting both notes ring. Because of the tuning, these notes are usually a 4th or 5th apart and sound well together. You can also make triads or chords, using the root, 5th and 3rd. For example, in open-E, if you play the top-3 strings at the octave fret, you have played an E major chord (E-B-G#). Similar triads can be found using the other strings. 3) Vibrato - An essential tool, and one that sets slide and slide-players apart from the rest of the breed. It runs from wide, exaggerated vibrato like George Thorogood to subtle, violin-like playing, with Bonnie Raitt falling somewhere in the middle. Kurt Lorange, an Australian player, says it is like drawing a little circle over the fret. Next Lesson - some practice riffs, and where to get more lessons and info. Ernie Lambert's TEXAS GUITAR PAGE: http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Vine/3069 ==================================================================