Chords for Slide Guitar - Core Techniques 1/3 - Scott Ainslie at Dream Guitars
Tempo:
125.35 bpm
Chords used:
E
Em
B
C#
A
Tuning:Standard Tuning (EADGBE)Capo:+0fret
Start Jamming...
[E]
[G] [C#]
[Em] [B]
[E] My name's Scott Ainsley.
I'm here at Dream Guitars [B] with a 1931 National Guitar, a Style O.
Came out of a pawn shop in Columbus, Georgia in the middle of the first Gulf War in 1991.
It's been under my arm ever since.
It's a fairly gaudy instrument.
It's got palm trees and three volcanoes on the back, a guy in a canoe down in one corner.
And it's one of my favorite nationals of all the nationals I've played in my entire [Em] life.
This one's it.
It's set up a little differently from other nationals.
It's got an ebony biscuit and a bone saddle instead of maple and a standard aluminum cone.
[E] And it just really sings.
[C#] Now when I teach slide guitar, I [Em] tend to start on just one string, and I do that by [A] teaching right hand muting first.
Pedal steel and lap steel players [G] can call this pick blocking, where you shut down all the strings with your right [D] hand.
So if I do this, nothing [B] happens.
And then you play one or two, or you let the ones out of the box that you can.
The problem with playing slide guitar is once you put this thing down on the strings, you've lost control of the instrument.
It's like turning six angry dogs loose after a [Fm] nine-year-old on a [F#] bicycle.
It's not going to end well.
So we mute with both hands to hold back the sustain and the noises.
It's not the sound you make when you play slide guitar that's cool.
It's actually the sounds you stop that allow the sound you make to come out.
[Bm] Everybody's done [E] that, but getting this, that's something else again.
So [D] I do that by putting my thumb above the string I want to play.
I'm going to work on the [D#] second string right now.
So I put my thumb on the third string and just lay the [A] back of it down against these bass strings.
[G#] So I'm muting the whole guitar with my [Gm] thumb and my two fingers on the higher [N] strings, so nothing will sound.
And then I usually use my index finger as my sort of shooting, my [B] trigger finger.
[E] And sometimes two.
And if I want to play the third string, I move the whole rig up one string.
[G] So my thumb's on four.
Play the fourth string, I move it up.
So you'll see this hand kind of crawling around on the guitar when I'm doing a performance where I want that kind of control.
I'm in standard tuning [E] now.
[Em] [E] And we'll work on the second string.
[B] You've never held on to the strings of a guitar like this before, so getting just your index finger to fire and holding on with everything else is really tricky.
[Em]
[Em] [E]
Now, I'm going to mute behind the slide as well by dragging a finger, usually my index finger, sometimes these two behind [A#] the slide, and [D] shutting down the back resonance.
[N] You don't want to hear that sound unless you're scoring a horror film.
So we lay a finger down behind the slide to stop the back resonance and play the string more lightly than you would [Am] if you were finger picking.
And you want to pull the string this way so it vibrates in this plane, in the string plane, rather than popping it away from the front of the guitar.
If you do that, it will rattle against the slide and make a tremendous amount of noise.
So there's a couple of things right-hand technique-wise that you need to pay attention to.
[E]
[B]
[E] [Bm] [Em]
And so when I play chords, [B] I'll lay my fingers down flat like this.
It's sort of like you're [F#] holding a book in your hand.
You've got these, all these knuckles are flat.
You'll push your forearm forward a little bit.
It's not this kind of a hand just trying to get the slide of the guitar.
[F#m] It's this.
It's a completely different way of addressing the neck with your [C#] left hand or your slide-playing hand.
And then as you move around, everything moves very readily.
You can come off the guitar in this way or move up the guitar neck this way with a very light contact.
When you land, [F] when you go up, get the slide where you want it, you set your thumb, and then your arm swings on that.
If your thumb's here, you're in real trouble [F#] because all these muscles will be firing and you won't have a relaxed arm.
And you need as much relaxation as you can.
Every bit of tension in your arm will translate into sound on the guitar
because you don't have frets to protect you from what's going on behind them.
So finding a way to really sort of pet the guitar neck and work like this is really, really critical.
And then I'm going to start [Em] with
[E]
The tips of these two fingers are on the second string.
The tip of the slide is on it.
And I'm going to slide down,
[Em] pick up a note with my index finger, [Am] and come back with a slide like that.
[G] [E]
[Bm] [Em]
[C#]
[E]
[A]
[F#m] [Em] [C#]
[Dm] [E]
Now when you fret a string behind the slide, you're going to press the string down below the string plane.
[B]
In order to get it to come back up, you have to let it go.
So you're sort of teeter-tottering with your hand.
You'll fret a string and then let it come back up.
And that's sort of [Em] key.
So you can't leave your finger down and try and get it to come back up.
You can't try and get your slide to it.
The string will be too close to the fingerboard.
So I'm going from 12 [B] 8, 10
[Bm] 10, [Em] 7, 8
5, [A] 7
[E]
[A] 3, [D#] 5
I have my thumb raised a little bit so [E] the bass string will resonate with the sympathetic scale.
We're in the key of E [Em] here.
[E]
And you can hear, you may be able to hear the guitar sort of humming in sympathy with the upper strings.
So that's slide lesson number one.
[N]
[G] [C#]
[Em] [B]
[E] My name's Scott Ainsley.
I'm here at Dream Guitars [B] with a 1931 National Guitar, a Style O.
Came out of a pawn shop in Columbus, Georgia in the middle of the first Gulf War in 1991.
It's been under my arm ever since.
It's a fairly gaudy instrument.
It's got palm trees and three volcanoes on the back, a guy in a canoe down in one corner.
And it's one of my favorite nationals of all the nationals I've played in my entire [Em] life.
This one's it.
It's set up a little differently from other nationals.
It's got an ebony biscuit and a bone saddle instead of maple and a standard aluminum cone.
[E] And it just really sings.
[C#] Now when I teach slide guitar, I [Em] tend to start on just one string, and I do that by [A] teaching right hand muting first.
Pedal steel and lap steel players [G] can call this pick blocking, where you shut down all the strings with your right [D] hand.
So if I do this, nothing [B] happens.
And then you play one or two, or you let the ones out of the box that you can.
The problem with playing slide guitar is once you put this thing down on the strings, you've lost control of the instrument.
It's like turning six angry dogs loose after a [Fm] nine-year-old on a [F#] bicycle.
It's not going to end well.
So we mute with both hands to hold back the sustain and the noises.
It's not the sound you make when you play slide guitar that's cool.
It's actually the sounds you stop that allow the sound you make to come out.
[Bm] Everybody's done [E] that, but getting this, that's something else again.
So [D] I do that by putting my thumb above the string I want to play.
I'm going to work on the [D#] second string right now.
So I put my thumb on the third string and just lay the [A] back of it down against these bass strings.
[G#] So I'm muting the whole guitar with my [Gm] thumb and my two fingers on the higher [N] strings, so nothing will sound.
And then I usually use my index finger as my sort of shooting, my [B] trigger finger.
[E] And sometimes two.
And if I want to play the third string, I move the whole rig up one string.
[G] So my thumb's on four.
Play the fourth string, I move it up.
So you'll see this hand kind of crawling around on the guitar when I'm doing a performance where I want that kind of control.
I'm in standard tuning [E] now.
[Em] [E] And we'll work on the second string.
[B] You've never held on to the strings of a guitar like this before, so getting just your index finger to fire and holding on with everything else is really tricky.
[Em]
[Em] [E]
Now, I'm going to mute behind the slide as well by dragging a finger, usually my index finger, sometimes these two behind [A#] the slide, and [D] shutting down the back resonance.
[N] You don't want to hear that sound unless you're scoring a horror film.
So we lay a finger down behind the slide to stop the back resonance and play the string more lightly than you would [Am] if you were finger picking.
And you want to pull the string this way so it vibrates in this plane, in the string plane, rather than popping it away from the front of the guitar.
If you do that, it will rattle against the slide and make a tremendous amount of noise.
So there's a couple of things right-hand technique-wise that you need to pay attention to.
[E]
[B]
[E] [Bm] [Em]
And so when I play chords, [B] I'll lay my fingers down flat like this.
It's sort of like you're [F#] holding a book in your hand.
You've got these, all these knuckles are flat.
You'll push your forearm forward a little bit.
It's not this kind of a hand just trying to get the slide of the guitar.
[F#m] It's this.
It's a completely different way of addressing the neck with your [C#] left hand or your slide-playing hand.
And then as you move around, everything moves very readily.
You can come off the guitar in this way or move up the guitar neck this way with a very light contact.
When you land, [F] when you go up, get the slide where you want it, you set your thumb, and then your arm swings on that.
If your thumb's here, you're in real trouble [F#] because all these muscles will be firing and you won't have a relaxed arm.
And you need as much relaxation as you can.
Every bit of tension in your arm will translate into sound on the guitar
because you don't have frets to protect you from what's going on behind them.
So finding a way to really sort of pet the guitar neck and work like this is really, really critical.
And then I'm going to start [Em] with
[E]
The tips of these two fingers are on the second string.
The tip of the slide is on it.
And I'm going to slide down,
[Em] pick up a note with my index finger, [Am] and come back with a slide like that.
[G] [E]
[Bm] [Em]
[C#]
[E]
[A]
[F#m] [Em] [C#]
[Dm] [E]
Now when you fret a string behind the slide, you're going to press the string down below the string plane.
[B]
In order to get it to come back up, you have to let it go.
So you're sort of teeter-tottering with your hand.
You'll fret a string and then let it come back up.
And that's sort of [Em] key.
So you can't leave your finger down and try and get it to come back up.
You can't try and get your slide to it.
The string will be too close to the fingerboard.
So I'm going from 12 [B] 8, 10
[Bm] 10, [Em] 7, 8
5, [A] 7
[E]
[A] 3, [D#] 5
I have my thumb raised a little bit so [E] the bass string will resonate with the sympathetic scale.
We're in the key of E [Em] here.
[E]
And you can hear, you may be able to hear the guitar sort of humming in sympathy with the upper strings.
So that's slide lesson number one.
[N]
Key:
E
Em
B
C#
A
E
Em
B
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ _ [G] _ _ [C#] _ _ _
_ _ [Em] _ _ _ _ [B] _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ My name's Scott Ainsley.
I'm here at Dream Guitars [B] with a 1931 National Guitar, a Style O.
Came out of a pawn shop in Columbus, Georgia in the middle of the first Gulf War in 1991.
It's been under my arm ever since.
It's a fairly gaudy instrument.
It's got palm trees and three volcanoes on the back, a guy in a canoe down in one corner.
And _ _ _ it's one of my favorite _ nationals of all the nationals I've played in my entire [Em] life.
This one's it.
_ _ It's set up a little differently from other nationals.
It's got an ebony biscuit and a bone saddle instead of maple and a standard aluminum cone.
[E] And it just really sings. _
_ [C#] Now when I teach slide guitar, I [Em] tend to start on just one string, and I do that by [A] teaching right hand muting first. _
Pedal steel and lap steel players [G] can call this pick blocking, where you shut down all the strings with your right [D] hand.
So if I do this, nothing [B] happens.
And then you play one or two, or you let the ones out of the box that you can.
The problem with playing slide guitar is once you put this thing down on the strings, you've lost control of the instrument. _
It's like turning six angry dogs loose after a [Fm] nine-year-old on a [F#] bicycle.
It's not going to end well.
So we mute with both hands to hold back the sustain and the noises.
It's not the sound you make when you play slide guitar that's cool.
It's actually the sounds you stop that allow the sound you make to come out.
_ [Bm] Everybody's done _ _ [E] that, but getting this, _ _ _ _ that's something else again.
So [D] I do that by putting my thumb above the string I want to play.
I'm going to work on the [D#] second string right now.
So I put my thumb on the third string and just lay the [A] back of it down against these bass strings.
[G#] So I'm muting the whole guitar with my [Gm] thumb and my two fingers on the higher [N] strings, so nothing will sound.
And then I usually use my index finger as my sort of shooting, my [B] trigger finger.
_ _ _ [E] And sometimes two.
And if I want to play the third string, I move the whole rig up one string.
[G] So my thumb's on four.
Play the fourth string, I move it up.
So you'll see this hand kind of crawling around on the guitar when I'm doing a performance where I want that kind of control.
I'm in standard tuning [E] now.
_ _ [Em] _ _ _ _ [E] And we'll work on the second string.
[B] _ _ _ _ You've never held on to the strings of a guitar like this before, so getting just your index finger to fire and holding on with everything else is really tricky. _ _ _ _
_ _ [Em] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Em] _ _ _ _ [E] _ _
_ Now, I'm going to mute behind the slide as well by dragging a finger, usually my index finger, sometimes these two behind [A#] the slide, and [D] shutting down the back resonance. _ _ _ _
[N] You don't want to hear that sound unless you're scoring a horror film.
So we lay a finger down behind the slide to stop the back resonance and play the string more lightly than you would [Am] if you were finger picking. _
And you want to pull the string _ this way so it vibrates in this plane, in the string plane, rather than popping it away from the front of the guitar.
If you do that, it will rattle against the slide and make a tremendous amount of noise.
So there's a couple of things right-hand technique-wise that you need to pay attention to.
[E] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [B] _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ [Bm] _ [Em] _
_ _ And so when I play chords, [B] I'll lay my fingers down flat like this.
It's sort of like you're [F#] holding a book in your hand.
You've got these, all these knuckles are flat.
You'll push your forearm forward a little bit.
It's not this kind of a hand just trying to get the slide of the guitar.
[F#m] It's this.
It's a completely different way of addressing the neck with your [C#] left hand or your slide-playing hand.
And then as you move around, everything moves very readily.
You can come off the guitar in this way or move up the guitar neck this way with a very light contact.
When you land, [F] when you go up, get the slide where you want it, you set your thumb, and then your arm swings on that. _
If your thumb's here, you're in real trouble [F#] because all these muscles will be firing and you won't have a relaxed arm.
And you need as much relaxation as you can.
Every bit of tension in your arm will translate into sound on the guitar
because you don't have frets to protect you from what's going on behind them.
So _ finding a way to really sort of pet the guitar neck and work like this is really, really critical.
And then I'm going to start [Em] with_
_ _ _ [E] _ _
_ The tips of these two fingers are on the second string.
The tip of the slide is on it.
And I'm going to slide down, _
_ _ [Em] pick up a note with my index finger, [Am] and come back with a slide like that.
[G] _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ _ [Bm] _ _ [Em] _ _ _
_ _ [C#] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _
[A] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[F#m] _ _ [Em] _ _ _ _ [C#] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [Dm] _ [E] _
_ _ Now when you fret a _ string behind the slide, you're going to press the string down below the string plane.
[B]
In order to get it to come back up, you have to let it go.
So you're sort of teeter-tottering with your hand.
You'll fret a string and then let it come back up.
_ And that's sort of [Em] key.
So you can't leave your finger down and try and get it to come back up.
You can't try and get your slide to it.
The string will be too close to the fingerboard.
So I'm going from _ 12_ [B] 8, _ _ 10_
[Bm] 10, [Em] 7, _ _ 8_ _ _ _ _
5, [A] 7_
_ _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ [A] _ 3, [D#] 5_
I have my thumb raised a little bit so [E] the bass string will _ resonate with the sympathetic scale.
We're in the key of E [Em] here.
_ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ And you can hear, you may be able to hear the guitar sort of humming in sympathy with the upper strings.
_ _ So that's slide lesson number one.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [N] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ _ [G] _ _ [C#] _ _ _
_ _ [Em] _ _ _ _ [B] _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ My name's Scott Ainsley.
I'm here at Dream Guitars [B] with a 1931 National Guitar, a Style O.
Came out of a pawn shop in Columbus, Georgia in the middle of the first Gulf War in 1991.
It's been under my arm ever since.
It's a fairly gaudy instrument.
It's got palm trees and three volcanoes on the back, a guy in a canoe down in one corner.
And _ _ _ it's one of my favorite _ nationals of all the nationals I've played in my entire [Em] life.
This one's it.
_ _ It's set up a little differently from other nationals.
It's got an ebony biscuit and a bone saddle instead of maple and a standard aluminum cone.
[E] And it just really sings. _
_ [C#] Now when I teach slide guitar, I [Em] tend to start on just one string, and I do that by [A] teaching right hand muting first. _
Pedal steel and lap steel players [G] can call this pick blocking, where you shut down all the strings with your right [D] hand.
So if I do this, nothing [B] happens.
And then you play one or two, or you let the ones out of the box that you can.
The problem with playing slide guitar is once you put this thing down on the strings, you've lost control of the instrument. _
It's like turning six angry dogs loose after a [Fm] nine-year-old on a [F#] bicycle.
It's not going to end well.
So we mute with both hands to hold back the sustain and the noises.
It's not the sound you make when you play slide guitar that's cool.
It's actually the sounds you stop that allow the sound you make to come out.
_ [Bm] Everybody's done _ _ [E] that, but getting this, _ _ _ _ that's something else again.
So [D] I do that by putting my thumb above the string I want to play.
I'm going to work on the [D#] second string right now.
So I put my thumb on the third string and just lay the [A] back of it down against these bass strings.
[G#] So I'm muting the whole guitar with my [Gm] thumb and my two fingers on the higher [N] strings, so nothing will sound.
And then I usually use my index finger as my sort of shooting, my [B] trigger finger.
_ _ _ [E] And sometimes two.
And if I want to play the third string, I move the whole rig up one string.
[G] So my thumb's on four.
Play the fourth string, I move it up.
So you'll see this hand kind of crawling around on the guitar when I'm doing a performance where I want that kind of control.
I'm in standard tuning [E] now.
_ _ [Em] _ _ _ _ [E] And we'll work on the second string.
[B] _ _ _ _ You've never held on to the strings of a guitar like this before, so getting just your index finger to fire and holding on with everything else is really tricky. _ _ _ _
_ _ [Em] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Em] _ _ _ _ [E] _ _
_ Now, I'm going to mute behind the slide as well by dragging a finger, usually my index finger, sometimes these two behind [A#] the slide, and [D] shutting down the back resonance. _ _ _ _
[N] You don't want to hear that sound unless you're scoring a horror film.
So we lay a finger down behind the slide to stop the back resonance and play the string more lightly than you would [Am] if you were finger picking. _
And you want to pull the string _ this way so it vibrates in this plane, in the string plane, rather than popping it away from the front of the guitar.
If you do that, it will rattle against the slide and make a tremendous amount of noise.
So there's a couple of things right-hand technique-wise that you need to pay attention to.
[E] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [B] _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ [Bm] _ [Em] _
_ _ And so when I play chords, [B] I'll lay my fingers down flat like this.
It's sort of like you're [F#] holding a book in your hand.
You've got these, all these knuckles are flat.
You'll push your forearm forward a little bit.
It's not this kind of a hand just trying to get the slide of the guitar.
[F#m] It's this.
It's a completely different way of addressing the neck with your [C#] left hand or your slide-playing hand.
And then as you move around, everything moves very readily.
You can come off the guitar in this way or move up the guitar neck this way with a very light contact.
When you land, [F] when you go up, get the slide where you want it, you set your thumb, and then your arm swings on that. _
If your thumb's here, you're in real trouble [F#] because all these muscles will be firing and you won't have a relaxed arm.
And you need as much relaxation as you can.
Every bit of tension in your arm will translate into sound on the guitar
because you don't have frets to protect you from what's going on behind them.
So _ finding a way to really sort of pet the guitar neck and work like this is really, really critical.
And then I'm going to start [Em] with_
_ _ _ [E] _ _
_ The tips of these two fingers are on the second string.
The tip of the slide is on it.
And I'm going to slide down, _
_ _ [Em] pick up a note with my index finger, [Am] and come back with a slide like that.
[G] _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ _ [Bm] _ _ [Em] _ _ _
_ _ [C#] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _
[A] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[F#m] _ _ [Em] _ _ _ _ [C#] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [Dm] _ [E] _
_ _ Now when you fret a _ string behind the slide, you're going to press the string down below the string plane.
[B]
In order to get it to come back up, you have to let it go.
So you're sort of teeter-tottering with your hand.
You'll fret a string and then let it come back up.
_ And that's sort of [Em] key.
So you can't leave your finger down and try and get it to come back up.
You can't try and get your slide to it.
The string will be too close to the fingerboard.
So I'm going from _ 12_ [B] 8, _ _ 10_
[Bm] 10, [Em] 7, _ _ 8_ _ _ _ _
5, [A] 7_
_ _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ [A] _ 3, [D#] 5_
I have my thumb raised a little bit so [E] the bass string will _ resonate with the sympathetic scale.
We're in the key of E [Em] here.
_ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ And you can hear, you may be able to hear the guitar sort of humming in sympathy with the upper strings.
_ _ So that's slide lesson number one.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [N] _