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Open tunings favor the technical side of common blues licks. And the main
tunings, open E and open A (which are the same, relatively speaking, as open
D and open G), each have their specific idiomatic licks. But to get started
using the slide, try the passage in Figure 11-11, which is in standard tuning.
Don’t press too hard when applying the slide or the strings will buzz against
the fret wire and fingerboard. Try to keep the rattle noise to a minimum when
going from open strings to slide-stopped strings.
Standard tuning licks
Standard tuning and open E tuning both feature the root of the chord on the
top string and an interval of a fourth between the first and second strings.
The lower note is the fifth of the chord, and so makes for powerful-sounding
licks, as Figure 11-12 shows. The passage isn’t that difficult, and the slide
doesn’t do that much. But what it does is very effective, even in small doses.
The lick in Figure 11-12 is the characteristic sound of one of the most famous
slide sounds of all time: “Dust My Broom” — a song originally by Robert
Johnson with conventional fretting but covered in the most famous version
by electric slide player Elmore James.
Track 75
Figure 11-12:
A standardtuning
slide
lick in the
style of
“Dust My
Broom.”
T
A
B
210 Part IV: Sounding Like the Masters: Blues Styles through the Ages TEAM LinG
Shuffle (qr=qce)
A7
Track 74
Figure 11-11:
A slide lick
in standard
tuning.
T
A B
with slide
0 5 0 3 5 5 0 3 5 5
Shuffle (qr=qce)
E7
3
3 3 3
with slide
vib. w/slide
12 12 12 12 12 12
12 12 12 12 12 12
3
12 11
0