Playing Slide

You don't have to use your pinky for slide, depending on what you are playing. If you are just using the slide it don't matter, but if you wan't to play chords and licks also (like delta blues), the pinky is best. It took me some time to get used to it. 8)

Two reasons to have "extra" fingers behind the slide. Damping is the obvious. The technique fewer seem to know about is behind the slide fretting. This allows one to play notes that are half and whole steps flatted from the slide position. This technique makes it reasonably easy to play minor, diminished, major7 and dominant 7 chords on a guitar open tuned to a major chord for slide.

How do you deaden the strings between the slide and the nut if the slide is on your pinky? What fingers do you use?

You use the other fingers to dampen the length of string between the slide and the nut. For the other, 'playing length' of string, to control the other strings that you're not playing, it's a sort of combination of lifting the slide and letting the other fingers touch the strings (especially if you're playing high-gain and at a good loud stage volume) and also using the heel of the picking hand to mute the unplayed strings. This is more for the single note type flatpick playing and not the full-on chordal delta type stuff. You use the pick and the picking hand in a similar way as when you're playing without the slide, so you wouldn't really need to have fingers in 'front' of the slide to control the other strings.

That control is also why a lot of guys don't use a flatpick.

I usually wear it on my pinky, but I've taken up playing with it on the ring finger again recently because for me at least, it's easier to angle the slide (for certain intervals) on that finger.

Sometimes I put the guitar face-up on my lap and play it like a dobro, holding the slide like you would a steel.

And, lots of times I use standard tuning, which my Strat is pretty happy about :)

A buddy of mine gave me this old crapy, cheap strat copy he had in the attic for years. I took it and put on 0.13 gage strings and put a dobro nut on it and use it as a lap steel 8) 8) I use a craftsman spark plug socket (13/16) for a slide--IT ROCKS :!: :twisted: :D :D

I have one of those dobro nuts too, pretty cool. It takes away the natural curve of the regular nut so all the strings are level and you don't get those little buzzes.

Slide (with fretting, of course) is all I play. Open D's my "home" tuning that I'm most comfortable in. (Open E's the same, just a step higher.) Open G/A is my secondary tuning, and minor variants of all these are cool.

Which finger you use for the slide is a matter of personal preference. Usually I use the ring finger, but there are some things that are easier to play with it on the pinky. I swich when it works better that way. I've watched Billy Gibbons play with a slide on his middle finger. Bonnie Raitt often does this, too, and I've seen her wear the slide on her index finger.

You don't need or want a very high action to play bottleneck slide. You've still GOT to be able to fret if you want to keep it interesting. You don't want to use the slide exclusively. A little higher action than the "shredders" prefer, and a little heavier first string, are great conveniences that make it easier, but an experienced slide player can grab any random guitar off the music store racks and play good sounding slide on it. Spatial coordination of the hand with the slide is what keeps you from banging into the fretboard all the time. A tight first string (and some extra space under it) just makes it easier.