- Hi guys, Jason Isbell here
for your Fender Artist Check-In.
I've got my Telecaster custom made by the,
I don't know, is it a Telecaster custom,
no this one's a custom Telecaster made by Fender Custom Shop
and I had them put a black pick guard on it
'cause I like the way that looks.
This guitar would normally have a white pick
but um what I thought I would talk to you
for a few minutes about today is a slide guitar.
Sometimes when I go in to do a session with somebody
who is a great guitar player, for example,
I went in and played with Tommy Emmanuel
on his last album.
When I went in I told him I would sing
or I would play slide guitar
and I would not do anything else.
Anything else, he should do himself
because Tommy's light years ahead of me as a guitar player
but if you know how to play a slide,
sometimes you can find work
where there might not otherwise be work
and it's just a really beautiful and
expressive way to play, the instrument
so I thought I would show you a few things
that I do on slide guitar um
to help me occupy my brain.
Um, one of the, I normally play slide in standard,
a lot of people use open E or open D or open G,
a lot of different tunings, but early on I started playing
the slide a couple years after I started playing guitar
and I didn't want to switch back and forth
between guitars so what I would do is
I would just play in standard because it was easier
than to tune between every song
and I didn't want to learn all of the covers
that I was playing when I was 15 or 16 in open tuning,
so really, like most innovation, it came out of laziness
and um the thing that I think is most important
if you play a slide guitar in standard tuning is
muting, you've got to be able to use your fingers
to mute the strings so you don't get tones ringing out
that you don't intend
and what I normally do with that is I play without a pick
for the most part.
Sometimes I use a pick if I'm trying to get
that kind of George Harrison sound
but for most things on slide, I don't use a pick.
I'll even put it in my mouth,
which is probably not hygienic,
don't put a pick in your mouth right now
or I'll hold it between my fingers or I'll just drop it
and forget about it, then look for it
for an hour afterward.
But if you're playing slide guitar in standard tuning,
let's say you're playing in the key of G,
we'll start with that.
(guitar playing)
That's the first one down here.
(guitar strumming)
You've got a lot of options for patterns
to start learning from.
You've got the standard G chord.
(guitar chord)
You've got these notes.
(guitar playing)
Then you've got your like, A bar blues
(guitar playing)
position.
(blues guitar)
I find that whenever you get the chance
to use an open string, it always sounds cooler.
So rather than getting this note,
(guitar chord)
you get this note.
(guitar chord)
You can ride it a little bit um
but if you'll notice, my right hand, while I'm playing,
the strings that I'm not actually hitting as a note,
they'll be usually covered by either the palm,
like the side of my hand or by my other fingers.
So if I were to play something like this,
just watch my right hand and watch the muting technique.
(guitar playing)
So if I'm not using one of the strings, I've got a hand
or a piece of hand fat on that string
to keep it from ringing out.
Also you can go up here to the 12th fret,
you've got your A bar,
(guitar strum)
that's what they used to call them I guess.
So if you're playing on a G in standard tuning,
(guitar chord)
there's this chord
and there's this chord. (guitar chord)
Your E bar
(guitar strum)
and your A bar
(guitar strum)
and if you're playing in the major key,
you can sort of use those as guide posts
and if you're doing
(guitar chord)
a major key, you can play outta this A-bar
(guitar playing)
really uh, really gives you three notes
all in a straight line to start from
in standard tuning.
(guitar playing)
So most of that is focused on these three notes.
So lets say you're moving that up to
the key of A
(guitar playing)
Then you've got basically these three
(guitar playing)
to start from.
This is usually the right way to go
(guitar playing)
You'll wind up on those three notes down here.
Same three, um
and that's a good starting point
if you're gonna play slide and standard
Make sure you do a lot of muting,
and then just think about the chord positions
(guitar playing)
and play out of those chord positions, um
That helps me more than thinking about scales
'cause I
I wind up thinking too much about scales,
I will uh play scales,
and other than practing,
nobody wants to hear you practice scales
but nobody wants to hear you play scales in the
middle of the song. That's for sure um
Once you sort of know instinctively
which notes you can hit, and which ones
don't really make a lot of sense,
then you can start singing.
So if I'm playing a solo or a slide,
I'm normally singing everything in my head
as I'm going along,
now this can make for complications
if you have guitar face.
Some people have guitar face
some people make guitar face and uh
if you don't want to look liked you're singing,
you're gonna have to tell yourself
don't move your mouth, but
Don't worry about that for now
that's later on for when you're up,
in front of people,
standing on stage.
For now, lets just, in our head, at least,
and maybe even out loud kind of sing along,
kind of like George Benson.
With everything that you're uh,
playing, and make it more melodic,
and make it work with the song better,
and it'll keep it from sounding like
you're just playing out of those patterns,
and actually sound like you're creating something.
(guitar playing)
I um play with my action relatively low um
I like to the action to be similar
to where I can play
(guitar playing)
play slide or not play slide
um
uh just depending on my preference that day um
the only, I have one guitar that's
a Stratocaster that's set up
more specifically for slide with
flatwound strings.
Blake Mills told me to put flatwounds on it,
and sure enough, he was right.
It uh, it really sounds like a Labster
but most of my guitars are set up for either,
and, I'll show you, you know
once you, I normally slide on the middle finger
because the first person I saw play slide
was Bonnie Raye and uh
um I noticed she had it on her middle finger,
so I told my parents I wanted a slide,
glass slide for Christmas,
and they gave me a glass slide and it was like
like this, one of these like, you know
a copy of the Chris Eaton bottle glass slide
and I remember thinking that's not the right thing
because, um she was using
a wine bottle bottleneck and uh
it was purple and or green,
I think it might have been green
um but I thought this is supposed to be green,
uh but sure enough,
it turned out to be pretty much the same thing
and one good thing about these
core seating style viles is that they
don't have a seam, um some people
like slides that don't have a seam.
I kind of like a seam sometimes
because you can roll it around and actually
play with it, and get some real scronky sounds
like Ry Cooder, or something but um
uh let's see,
now that we're playing slide, we're in standard um
(guitar playing)
playing G
There's one thing that I do
that don't know of a lot of people
who do it.
I'm sure there are but I just,
I can't think of any
that I'm not gonna try too hard um
It's similar to the Sunny Landridge technique.
Sunny plays with the slide on his pinky
and uh frets behind the slide
in a way that's incredible and
and just really genius,
and nobody can do it like him
A lot of people do that uh nowadays but,
I like to go in front of the slide
and do Hammer-on's and Pull-off's
with my ring finger and my pinky finger
so like if you play
(guitar playing)
G and you go to a power chord
(guitar playing)
You can do some hammer-on's and pull-off's
with the pinky finger.
(guitar playing)
A lot of stuff you can do
just with these two fingers
I think if you get them trained. Um,
What else? Sometimes I will uh
make those minor chords
kind of like Sonny would do
like uh
(guitar playing)
Don't be afraid to make noises that aren't pretty
when you're playing a slide 'cause
one of the things that I like about
a lot of the great old uh slide players um
Hounddog Taylor, um uh
Bubba White, Robert Johnson all the way up
through uh Ry Cooder and Blake Mills and and
Derrick Trucks, that magnificent Derrick Trucks
you know they make sounds that aren't just
note and sounds that that uh might have
started out accidentally but still find their way
into the music intentionally as people mature and get better
you know, the rattling on the frets, especially
on the E string
(plays guitar)
can be really cool and really uh, you know
give a little bit more
humanity to the music that you're making.
If everything's perfect,
it doesn't really work as well for me.
Also one thing I try really hard to avoid is this
(guitar strum)
all the time.
(guitar strum)
You hear a lot of slide players who are great
but every not they hit, they go
(guitar playing)
and after a while it's kind of like
uh, somebody who whistles their S's
all I can hear is that (harsh whistle)
like you're talking to somebody
who whistles their S's, and all you can hear
is the whistle.
You can't hear the words, um
when you do too many of the rakes it it
takes me out of what's going on
it starts getting on my nerves, Um
so try to just focus on the note
(Guitar playing)
Thank you
Jason Isbell, hope I've distract you,
given you a little bit of entertainment today,
thanks to Fender for doing this,
Happy to check in with you guys, and uh
yeah, play more slide guitar, its good for you.