Chords for Slide Guitar for Beginners - Part One - Roy Fulton

_ _ _ [Gb] _ _ [F] _
_ _ [G] _ _ [A] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Bb] _ _ [Em] _ _
_ _ _ _ [D] _ _
[C] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [Em] _ _
_ _ _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ [F] _ _ [G] _ _
[Ab] _ _ [G] _ _ _
[Ab] Hi guys, welcome to [N] another YouTube video.
Today we're going to look at the dobro and
the plain slide.
To start off with this slide, what I'm using here is a Dunlop Parrots glass
slide.
You can use obviously brass or chrome or whatever, but I actually kind of prefer
the sweet sound of the glass slide.
What's important, or what I [G] think is important is
the thickness of the actual slide.
The thinner that is, the thinner the sound tends to be,
and the thicker that is, the more thickness in terms of tone.
I like a [Abm] nice thick tone,
so I use as thick as a bottleneck is in [N] use.
In terms of the different fingers you can put it on,
that's really entirely up to yourself.
I mean, if you analyse some of the great slide players,
they use, you know, you can use that finger, that finger, any of them, you know, you'll find
that all the different great slide players have their own choice.
I'd sort of have a look,
try to figure out what's the best, and not really, I think it's just down to what you feel
comfortable with.
So I think really, don't be taking your lead from anybody else, you must use
that particular finger, just use whatever finger that you feel comfortable with and just work with
that really.
So I'm going to use the third finger today, the ring finger.
So just to tell you,
first of all I'm using a vintage dobro, a nice little guitar.
This is all loaned from a very
good friend, thanks very much for this today, I appreciate it.
And we're down here in the
Janny Boggs Centre of Music Excellence, so thanks to Janny as well for picking up with us.
And we're
going to get started.
We're going to just go through the tuning here.
I'm using, basically,
guitar standard tuning, but then I've altered a few strings.
We start with standard tuning,
you know, which would be E, B, G, D, A, E.
But what we do is we alter a few strings and then
that gives us this nice new tuning.
We'll keep the E down to a D, okay, so we [D] just tune the E the
same as our D. _ _
Our [Ab] B, G and D are going to stay as [G] normal. _ _
The A string we're just dropping down
to a G. _
And finally, our bottom E string we're dropping down to a D [D] as well.
So that's from the
first string, that's D, B, G, D, G, D.
And that gives us [G] an open G chord.
And what's nice, [Gb] for instance, if you're just playing chords, you can, for instance,
bounce the fifth string against the sixth string. _ _ _ _
[E] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _
So it's a nice little simple idea.
So I'm just bouncing off [Eb] the A string, which is now [G] a G.
Fifth string, G, part of a chord,
open chord and then off the sixth string.
_ [G] _ _
_ _ [Gb] A couple of things to really just help you when you're playing
slide is make sure that you aim for, when you normally play a guitar, we're sort of playing close to the [N] fret, what we're doing is we're going to aim over the fret and that's important when you're playing slide is that you don't sort of play in the box as such in the fret, you play over the actual wire.
So if I go into a [C] C chord, [Eb] what I do is actually go to the,
over the top of the wire and not normally where you would.
_ [C] _ _
[E] _ _ [Eb] I've got some nice [B] easy chords here, we'll have an open G chord.
So at the 12th fret, that'll be a G as well. _ _
_ At the 5th fret we'll have a C chord.
[C] _
[Bm] At the 7th fret we'll have a D chord.
_ [C] _ _
[B] So that gives us some nice easy chords [N] to target when we're going to be playing here.
So as I say, we aim over the fret.
The important thing is not to actually just sort of rely on that totally, but use your ear.
So because obviously you can't sort of be moving down exactly to the, to the, you know, perpendicular to the fret.
So what you do is obviously aim for [Bm] over the fret, but use your ear for intonation.
[C] Okay, so that's important little tip.
[G] When we're playing, you [Eb] don't press down on the slide where we do when we're playing normally, you know, where you're pressing fret notes.
What we do is, basically you let the slide touch the strings and glide across the strings.
So there is [F] contact, or contact obviously, [B] but it's just enough to make the [G] contact.
So [N] we're not pressing, squeezing down hard, and that's quite a common problem I see most students when they're on the slide is sort of [Ab] pressing down too much and getting a clunking of the frets.
Okay, so that's a nice little simple thing as well to [Ebm] watch out for.
And what [E] we do as well, if we're playing a particular note, [Em] _
_ _ [G] _ _ _
[Ab] we aim over the fret, but as I say, we let our ears help us with the tuning.
And [N] how we help, or how we really encourage that is we use a bit of vibrato.
So if I'm playing to say to a note, [E] I don't just play sort of flat up to the note and hold it.
What I would do is I would [Gb] play a bit of vibrato. _ _
And here's a nice [N] little tip that's basically a great little idea and works every time.
What you do is you play up to the note, play the vibrato, play a large vibrato, a wide vibrato, and then as your ear sort of finds the pitch, then you can narrow that vibrato to find the actual, you know, pure note. _ _ _
[Am] _ _ _ _ [C] _ _
[Gb] _ _ _ _ [N] _ _
_ So what we do is we're starting with a larger [B] vibrato.
And then we're [Gb] letting our ear and our finger position guide us to where we want the note to finish.
And we're then narrowing the vibrato.
_ [Ab] _
[N] And either way, with the concert you actually find that you don't actually have to rely on that as much, but that's a useful little tip as well.
[G] _ _ _