30 Beginner Slide Blues Guitar Licks You MUST Know

Before we get into the licks, I'd like to focus on the specifics of how to develop proper slide technique in regard to the necessary techniques for the fret and the pick hand. The first thing is to set the "action" of your guitar - the height of the strings relative to the fretboard - higher than you may normally use. Many slide guitar players will set their action higher when playing with a slide because it's easier to sound a note by placing the slide against the string without danger of pushing too low and banging into the frets, and with more space under the string, it's easy to move the slide up and down the strings to produce clean and even-sounding notes and a clear, sustaining vibrato. The correct amount of pressure to use with the slide is just enough to sound a note while being careful not to press the string down against the fretboard.

Another aspect to address is the type of slide to use: glass, metal, ceramic, or another material; each of these materials will produce a different tone. I prefer glass "bottles", the type used by Duane Allman. Another concern is the finger on which to wear the slide - most players use either the pinky, the ring finger, or the middle finger. I prefer the ring finger, as did Duane Allman as well as Derek Trucks, Warren Haynes, and Ry Cooder.

The slide needs to be positioned directed above the fret wire for the note to sound in tune properly. It will take practice to master proper slide technique so all of the notes you play are perfectly in tune. Lastly, a slide vibrato is produced by moving the slide up and down the length of the string in evenly repeated increments. The optimal slide vibrato will emulate the sound of the human voice.

The best way to become acclimated to playing slide guitar is to start off by incorporating an open tuning, and we'll begin our look at slide by tuning the guitar to open E, low to high, E B E G# B E. In this tuning, strumming across all of the open strings will yield the sound of an E major chord. This is the optimal tuning to begin one's study of slide guitar because by the nature of its design, the slide can naturally be placed across multiples of strings at any given fret, and when in an open tuning such as this, chords or partial chords can be sounded. Likewise, each of the open strings now produces one of the chord tones for an E major chord, so each open string provides a useful note to use while soloing.

This very simple lick will introduce to you the elements of fret and pick hand techniques that are necessary to produce a good sound when playing single notes with the slide.

In this lick, a single note is sounded with the slide on each of the four downbeats in each bar. The note sounded on beats one, two, and three is an E note, located at the 12th fret of the first string. The slide is positioned just below the 12th fret when the string is picked, and then the slide moves up to the 12th fret so a properly intonated E note is sounded on these beats. For beat four, the slide is at first positioned at the 12th fret, and is pulled back to the 10th fret on the downbeat of beat four, sounding a D note, one whole step lower than E. This simple lick will provide the opportunity to practice sliding up to and down to specific notes with the slide, with an ear attuned to sounding these notes perfectly in tune.

Now that you have the basic idea of sliding up to higher notes and down to lower notes on one string, let's move on to the next logical place by applying this movement to progressively lower strings.

Just as in the first lick, a note is sounded on each downbeat here, but now each successive note moves from the first, to the second, to the third, to the fourth string, sounded with a "slide up" to each of these notes. This lick affords the opportunity to hit each target note properly, and also illuminates the benefit of the open tuning in that the notes of an E major triad (E, B and G#) are sounded when laying the slide across the top three strings at the 12th fret.

Muddy Waters was one of the most important and influential blues musicians ever, and along with his great contributions as a songwriter and singer, he was also a very expressive and influential slide guitarist. In fact, Muddy devised a few intro licks using the slide that have become affectionately known as "Muddy licks."

Here's one of the most basic and essential Muddy licks: on beats one and two, I begin with a slide up to a high E note at the 12th fret, after which the note is picked again without moving the slide. In other words, the first E note is sounding by sliding up to it, and the second E note is sounded with no slide movement at all. On beats three and four, three evenly spaced notes are sounded as the slide moves between the 12th and 10th frets on the top two string, with the phrase ending with notes on the third and fourth strings that are sounded at the 12th fret. Notice in particular that some of the notes are sounded with a glissando (a slide) up to the note, while other notes are sounded "plain" (with no glissando). This lick affords one the opportunity to practice both techniques.

This lick represents another classic "Muddy" style intro that's only slightly more complex than the previous lick. Three evenly spaced notes are sounded on each beat, and a more pronounced slide movement is executed, in either an upward or downward glissando as the lick progresses. Essential to the proper articulation of this lick, as well as the previous three licks, is stopping the note from sounding immediately after it's struck. This way, none of the subsequent notes will "bleed" into each other, ensuring the clean sound of only one note at a time.