Chords for Open G Tuning Slide Guitar Lesson

[G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [C] _ [G] _ Hey, this is John with LearningGuitarNow.com and in this podcast I'm going to talk to you
a little bit about Open G Tuning Sly Guitar Lick.
First of all, once again, this is Open G Tuning.
Strings are [D] D, _ [G] G, _ [D] D, _ _ [G] another G, [Fm] a [Bm] B string, _ and another D.
[G] _ _ So in this little lesson I'm just going to show you a quick little lick that you can
do in Open G Tuning to play blues with.
I'm just going to go ahead and play the lick for you.
It's kind of an exercise as well to develop rhythm.
So it goes something like this. _ _ _ _ _
[D] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ So that's how the lick sounds.
It's just combining my rhythm lick and practicing what you'll do over the G chord of a 12 bar
blues in the key of G.
So I'm playing the blues kind of rhythm riff here.
I'm using my fingers though, thumb, first and second, to play the G [D] string, D, and [G] the G together. _ _
Open strings, _ then you put your first finger down on the second fret of the D string.
_ _ _ You can do this one twice.
Pretty simple. _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ So we're going to play it twice.
You've [D] got _ the second time, you're just going to put it down and take it off so you can
switch to this part. _ _
_ [G] _ Because you've got open strings which allow you to move up to the 12th fret without having
that second finger stuck there the second time.
So slowly, _ _ _ _ _ _ jump up to the 12th fret with the slide, _ _ [F#] _ [G] _ and then slide into the 12th fret,
_ hit it six times.
_ I think that's right, yeah.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. _
_ Slide the bottom string from 12 to 10, [N] _
and then you slide into the 12th fret of the B
string, and then you hit the 12th fret of the G string on the G string right there.
[G] _ _ So you can keep repeating it over and over again. _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ It's just a simple thing, but it keeps you playing in time, just playing the rhythm with it. _ _ _
_ _ _ It sounds really good, and it also develops your rhythm skills of staying in time when
you're playing, because you've got a lead part and a rhythm part put together.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
It's just an excellent exercise, and it works well in the context of a blues song or band or whatever.
But slowly, the lick is this. _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ Now that position on the 12th fret here, if you play it all the way across with a slide,
forms a G chord.
_ _ Just like open G tuning here, you've got this as a G chord.
_ 12th fret. _ _
_ This is a G chord as well.
So you have a bunch of cool licks that you can play right there. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ There's just a ton of different [Gm] tunes that have that kind of sound in it, and all the
old blues stuff sounds like that.
[G] _ _ _ _
_ I'm just speeding it up right here.
The same thing. _ _
_ _ _ _ Let it go farther. _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ So you can play it slow, you speed it up.
_ _ _ See what I'm saying? _
_ _ _ _ [Bm] _ _ [G] _
You just want to definitely take it slow in the beginning so you can get it to sound good.
You don't want to try to play it too fast, but it's good to try to work up to a faster
speed as you get used to playing it. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [C] _ _ _ I just went to C, the 1-4-5.
I'm not going to go into the whole thing, but you can go to C if you want to try it out.
Bar the 5th fret.
_ Use your pinky to play the blues riff there.
That's what I'm doing.
_ _ _ _ _ [D] _
So it sounds really cool, [C] a blues like that.
[G] _ _
_ _ _ _ [D] _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ [G] _ _ _ _ [D] _ [G] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
Make sure you play it slowly so you can get it down to where you know how to play it.
So that's pretty much it for this lesson.
Just combining a rhythm lick with a lead lick.
It improves your rhythm skills, and then you're learning a classic blues lick, as well as
playing lead and rhythm in the same area.
Instead of just sticking to rhythm and playing lead, you're doing both. _ _ _ _
It'll make your lead playing so much better because you can_
If you list a lot of great slide players, such as Derrick Trucks, he'll a lot of times
play solo licks. _ _
_ _ _ _ He'll go into some type of rhythm pattern after that, and it just makes the solo flow
really well when he does something like that.
So that's it for this lesson.
Look out for more Open G Tuning slide guitar lessons at