Forced to change tracks...

why do you guys do it?

:lol:

Lap steel has been my main instrument for about 4 years now, but some months ago I suddenly got inspired to play a little bottleneck slide again and got totally hooked. I'm not abandoning the lap steel, it's still my main instrument and inspiration, but bottleneck slide has a dimension that lap steel lacks (and vice versa..).

I find it hard to explain in words, but if I should try it would be that there is a certain "vulnerability" to bottleneck that makes it very expressive. Lap steel is also very expressive, but for some stuff it's just too perfect and smooth,- the tone is full and rich, the sustain is otherworldly.. The 'imperfections' of bottleneck sliding, that you describe so perfectly :wink: are exactly what makes it so human and 'vulnerable'.

So I find both very inspirational and expressive - they just express different things.... So I pick whatever I think works best for the stuff I play - in one band I play weissenborn, in another I play bottleneck slide on a Les Paul, and in a third band I play electric lap steel. I'll probably need a truck full of instruments if I should decide to do some solo stuff... :lol:
And you know - just like we don't have to try and emulate Jerry Byrd or Sol Hoopii to play lap steel, nobody's forcing us to sound like Duane or Elmore..

Happy sliding! 8)

Steinar

Ahhh yes....

I think Tom Hanks said it best in a League of Their Own - It's the hard that makes it great.
If it was easy, then everybody would do it.

Yes, the strange nuances of bottleneck are part of it's charm.

Though like I was talking to Ricochet a bit about - it's the pursuit of perfection that is whats great about it.

The HOURS of doing nothing but a simple repitition just so you can hit the strings with the slide smoothly.

The proper string damping (and placing the slide on yer pinky, which seems SO wrong at first).

The proper amount of force applied to the strings to get good tone (or it's too thin sounding) without hitting the frets.

The avoidance of wound strings (tho some like this). It's good in moderation.

The proper vibrato technique.

And THEN, you gotta learn the riffs and how to make actual music with it. LOL

Ken

Why play bottleneck? Well - back in the 70's, when I was first learning guitar, I didn't even know what a bottleneck or slide guitar was. THEN I saw Ry Cooder playing "Vigilante Man" on the Old Grey Whistle Test. One guy, one guitar, a slide over his finger making music like that? Funny enough, not long after that, a band called Nazareth had their first hit - "Broken Down Angel" it was called. I went to see them in Liverpool with a mate, and guess what they played? Got it in one - Vigilante Man. That was the first song I ever tried to play on slide.

I've messed around with it a lot since - but it's only the last couple of years or so I've taken it seriously. I love the sound of it - you can play it on electric, acoustic, with or without distortion....you can even play it in standard tuning. I love that open G tuning - I'd rather play that than A D or E, and I've never tried any of the more exotic tunings.

Something I've found when I play bottleneck slide - I'm more creative. Ordinarily, my guitar solos are just a collection of the same old licks I've played for years, but when I'm playing bottleneck, I find it easier to come up with something new.

I've heard some good music played on lap steel by some of the guys on this forum - I've never played a lap steel though, and I've never been tempted to try one. I don't know why - guess I just prefer the guitar. I've played guitar lap-steel style though - and I have to say, it wasn't a success. I prefer playing with the guitar in a normal position, either standing or sitting. But I do love a good slide solo! And I can assure you, I don't sound the slightest bit like Duane or Elmore!

:D :D :D

Vic

And you can mix in some fretted stuff if your action isn't lap steel high. In fact, good bottleneck playing often has quite a bit of fretted work mixed in it. Just the basic old I-IV-V blues shuffle is something you can't do without fretting.

With lots of practice you can develop a good enough feel to know where to stop your slide from muscle memory without relying on the string tension to keep the slide from knocking into the fretboard. Then you don't have to rely on heavy strings and high action. My teacher used to grab random guitars off the racks at the store to play with me at lessons. That's cool.

Then you don't have to rely on heavy strings and high action.

That's something I've only found out in the last couple of years! Nowadays I play mainly in standard tuning - I use 9's on my electric, and they do sound OK. I've actually got 10's on one acoustic, but that's kept in open tuning - usually open G - and has a slightly higher action than my main acoustic, and I do quite a bit of strumming in open G as well as playing bottleneck.

:D :D :D

Vic

my buddies joke with me at jam night.
'are you gonna stand or sit this week?'.

I discovered my other side when I fell into lap steel about three and a half years ago.
the steel in my left hand is now an extension of my fingers.
my ears got much bigger because I began to hear of other genres of slide guitar music.
and when I stood back up?
my stand up guitar fret board revealed long hidden secrets.
not only finger fretting made more sense, so did slide.
my after-work-decompression-acoustic, I found, had a penchant for glass.
if my back hurt I soothed it with glass on my finger.
and when I lap styled it, I felt a guilty pleasure of hearing those tones
coming through the sound hole pointed up just for me this time.
I like the smoothness of lap steel.
I agree that bottleneck has a quality that is more...noisy.
those clacky frets and bottom-outs do not seem to be very musical.
somehow I can lose myself in the music I hear in my head while I play.
the clacks actually sound right.
I must be insane.
the insane only get worse.
the more guitar I play the more guitar I play.
woof.

Well, it's a cheap crappy guitar but it was free. I have never played with humbuckers and liked it, but I just ordered an amp (Orange Crush 15 watt) so it will be interesting to hear what I sound like plugged in. I am going to stick it out, though lap steel is still my love interest I will be lovin' on the slide sometimes too. I am such a whore... hehehe.

OK, I didn't write "lady of the evening", but that's how the software edits... yeesh.

So I spent some time thinking about what you guys wrote and I think I get it a little better than I did. The reason I didn't stay with pedal steel was that, compared to lap steel, it was too accurate; some of the soul seemed to be missing when all the bends from the pedals and levers were tuned so perfectly. Slants seemed to be a little edgier and have a little more of a vocal quality. So applying that theory to this discussion, I suppose I should be looking at slide as an even earthier approach. I can't say it would be more vocal, as lap steel is about as expressive an instrument as I can imagine, but perhaps it will cause me to simplify the vocabulary... interesting.

You know, sometimes I like to play something like I Just Wanna Make Love To You and just bang the HELL out of the guitar with my metal fingerpicks and Craftsman deep socket slide. Nothing "too accurate," but definitely "expressive." :lol:

I just started to take slide guitar seriously, so I'm probably in the same situation you are, it's fun but it does suck when you think you're sounding great until you slide up just a bit too much :x

OUCH - STOP!!!! :x
Yer hurting my ears!!!! :P

I hope yer not talking about abusing that beautiful tricone Ric...?

WitchDoc - I don't know how heavy yer slide is...? Or if you're putting it on yer pinky...
It takes a light touch to get the slide and your other fingers on the strings at the same time to damp 'em.
+ there's a lot of timing involved, as you are actually almost muting the string to be played with your pick finger,
and then plucking it just a split second after you lay the slide down. (You are using your fingers and not a pick???? :roll: )

And it seems that you don't just lay the slide down as say.... in a lateral movement.
You SLIDE into the strings.
With the slide on yer pinky, keep all 4 of yer fingers together or the heft of the slide will be too heavy for yer pinky
to control.
Slide the slide and yer index finger onto the string and then press lightly into the string to get good tone. (Too much
and you'll go outta tune)

If you're angling the top of the slide away from the strings too much - you could be clacking the frets with it that way.
Or if you're more towards the 10th - 12th frets, remember that there is less tension there than there is closer to the nut.
So you have to ease off of the the push into the strings, or you'll clack the frets.
Very gentle the farthur away from the nut.

Also, I find that a 1" slide that goes over my pinky allows for greater control and ease of playing non-slide parts.

Just thought I'd throw some suggestions your way.
I feel kinda silly, as I KNOW yer a great lap player.

Ken

Okay - so I actually hunted down my slide to 'check out' MY story....

It seems that I put the slide on my pinky, and then put my MIDDLE finger NEXT to it and then my ring finger on top
between the middle finger and the slide.
I then Damp with my index finger.

And, my index finger seems to contact the string first - then the slide.
My index finger damps the string while my 'pick' finger mutes it as well.
the slide is already started then by the time the slide touches the string and then I 'pick' it.

A very complex thing to try and explain.
I hope it made sense. :)

Ken

Yep, my Johnson will take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.

When it's beat on like that it makes its own kind of distortion, too, rather like cranking an electric amp all the way up does. Nasty!
8)

You know, I've been watching this thread for a few days now and...I realize I don't really have an answer for that first question - why do we play slide.

The insane part, well, I think our answers might all be a bit similar ;)

But...for me I guess, it's that I started fooling with a slide decades (wow, let's see...yah, like 20 years) before I ever got a lap steel. I used to really like the sound of the steel, but I didn't really investigate it too much and assumed it was all 'pedal steel' and well, it was hard enough for me to find a good left handed regular guitar without thinking about finding one with the pedals all on the other side of the thing. I was using righties and reversing the strings - reversing all the pedals was waaay beyond what I knew I could do.

And now? I still don't know. I pick up a slide and play once in awhile, but I use it mostly when I'm arranging or recording and trying out different sounds. It's not my go-to way of playing. I'll start filling in the blanks on a recording and maybe come up with a line or counter-melody playing regular tuning, regular style guitar, and then pick up the slide and do the same line with it. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. It's mostly just a 'sound' for me; a different way of playing the same notes, and in some situations it fits, in others it doesn't.

It's not like I actually ever sit down and practice with the slide. I mean for recording, you've technically 'only gotta do it good once' kind of thing. Then it's on to the next track or on to harmonizing the slide line I just did, or whatever else it takes to get the tune filled out.

Even with the lap I have now: It's not my first-call instrument. Actually it's third in most cases because I'll maybe go through the process described above - regular to slide - and then go a 'little extra' and play the line on the lap steel just to see if it adds more sweetness than the regular slide guitar line. It's like levels of sweetness is what I experiment with.

Plus it's in a 6th tuning, and sometimes in tunings, as you probably know, you accidentally hit another string and it sounds good and that leads to a whole different idea, and on and on.

And what's also weird about the lap steel for me is that I got it for the Hawaiian stuff we were doing and I only ever wanted to play it through a real clean setting/model on the POD and do the chimes and fills and comps and stuff. I mean I have put it through the Recto model with the gain all the way up, but...I didn't get it for that and I never take it out and play a real dirty electric blues thing with it. If I want dirty, lowdown, bluesy or rocky sounding slide, I just take out the Strat or LP, dial in the JCM800 model and pick up the slide - in standard tuning, since it's the First Tuning for me. Maybe I'll start referring to standard as First Tuning instead. ;)

But though I've played the lap dirty, I...just don't like it. I like the clarity of it, the chimey sounds, and so regular ol' First Tuning electric guitar with a slide and lots of distortion (or not), is like...still second choice for me. Depends if it sounds good in a song. That's the final deciding point, really.

I play slide guitar, but I don't consider myself a slide guitar player, is ultimately what I guess I'm saying ;)