minorkey
C.O.G.
Too many instruments, too little time
Posts: 2,992
My main instrument is: hurting my fingers!
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Post by minorkey on Jan 12, 2014 0:13:21 GMT
Here's a photo of my glass slide. Paid a tenner for it, and that was a lot of money to me! Its seen with my Tanglewood which it slides best with (not so easy with my Fender due to its lower action, which I need for that guitar)
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Post by vikingblues on Jan 12, 2014 14:46:08 GMT
Hi minorkey, I'll relate my experience with slide and you can take from it what you want. As a guide, I can play Martin Simpsons In The Pines, BWJ's Dark Was The Night, Kelly Joe Phelps Down To The Praying Ground, I favour the melodic stuff. I started with a cheap chrome slide on electric on my third finger down to the second knuckle, did the basic things and learnt a passable No Way Out but that was it. Over the years I fiddled with Open D on acoustic, learnt very basic blues licks and tried several slides that I still have. In order, I tried a medicine bottle on my third finger, second knuckle (sounded awful on acoustic) and I couldn't mute behind it. Went to a brass concave slide I still occasionally use for lapslide on my pinky, this was when I started being able to mute behind the strings, moved to a Keb Mo Mudslide in the same way, sent several years not playing slide and finally ended up with a Diamond Bottlenecks Ultimate (nicknamed The Beast) lead crystal slide on my pinky all the way to the base. All the slides fit fairly snuggly at the knuckle/base of my fingers but had room so I could slightly bend the finger inside it and all were full length that could cover the fret board. I find the finger naturally curves slightly inside the slide and slides that don't allow this to happen can cause pain. I learned that on electric, material didn't matter and actually you can move a heavy slide as quickly as a light one. I don't play much electric slide but if I start I'll be ordering another, lighter Ultimate (current is too heavy for the string gauge). On acoustic, material matters a lot as does weight, particularly for melodic stuff where you pluck a string and then move around a lot. I favour glass and the Diamond Bottlenecks are the best, the pyrex Dunlop ones are not good. As a guide, my Ultimate is about twice the weight of my brass slide, I love it. Heavy does not mean slow, Martin Simpsons slides are about twice the weight of mine and he's certainly no slouch. It just means more sustain and less pressure so less muscle tightness in the hand. In terms of position, I find it much easier to have a slide down to the base of my pinky and lay my muting fingers flat behind it, I think I use my first finger to mute most of the time. That's obviously personal but I've tried ring and pinky and the pinky works for me. I'm happy to take photos if you want to see how it fits but my advice would be to try the pinky, give it some time, and see how it goes. Also, if you really want to play slide, investing in a good slide is well worth the money once you know what you want. My Ultimate was £25, which isn't that much for something you use a lot, they also do real bottlenecks which are cheaper but also good. I'd like to second so much of what you've said in this post. I too started with cheap off the shelf slides from various guitar shops. Some pyrex, some metal, one brass. Trying mainly to use the ring finger. There were two things these slides had in common - they were cheap and they were not very well fitting. I got put onto Diamond Bottlenecks by someone on a forum. I studied their advice, Looked at finger measurements. Had a chat on the phone with the guy at Diamond. Very helpful and talked me out of getting a more expensive (but less suitable) slide from him. This all resulted in getting a really smooth solid glass slide that was a proper made to measure fit for my pinky. The other result - much, much better quality of slide playing came from it. For me using the pinky rather than the ring finger fior the slide was a revelation - having all those other fingers free to fret notes and play some chord stuff too - somehow it also feels more natural. Odd how some things do feel natural and others do not - a flat-pick does not feel natural to me but my Fred Kelly Delrin thumbpick does (that was the total opposite to my expectations). Now that I have the Resonator I have no excuse for not using the slide more and getting better at it. Though bizarrely I found myself playing some classical guitar pieces today for the first time in several years - on my resonator! - with a thumb pick!! Even odder - I was getting some sounds that sounded more suited to classical than I used to get from my classical guitar. Ho hum!
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Post by andyhowell on Feb 8, 2014 13:17:23 GMT
Now that I have the Resonator I have no excuse for not using the slide more and getting better at it. Though bizarrely I found myself playing some classical guitar pieces today for the first time in several years - on my resonator! - with a thumb pick!! Even odder - I was getting some sounds that sounded more suited to classical than I used to get from my classical guitar. Ho hum! Experiment will often reward you will all kinds of unexpected things ...
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Post by the23rdman on Feb 9, 2014 17:48:35 GMT
Have a genius...
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Post by curmudgeon on Mar 30, 2014 22:17:58 GMT
This track is currently on the Voyager space craft, somewhere beyond our solar system, in order to prove to alien life forms that there is intelligent life on Earth. Seems fair enough. Wha? - after hitting that octave chord - he LOOKED down at his tip jar ! Whoops!
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Post by colan on Mar 31, 2014 20:00:35 GMT
Sure gets to me;
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Post by slidingwolf on Apr 4, 2014 19:44:26 GMT
This track is currently on the Voyager space craft, somewhere beyond our solar system, in order to prove to alien life forms that there is intelligent life on Earth. Seems fair enough. Wha? - after hitting that octave chord - he LOOKED down at his tip jar ! Whoops! It's not actually BWJ - this is from the Wim Wenders video of the Martin Scorsese series on the Blues. The player in the video is Chris Thomas King, playing the part. I read somewhere that he put contact lenses in which made him look blind.
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Post by slidingwolf on Apr 5, 2014 14:01:46 GMT
And a great lap slide player too, which is where he started.
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Post by slidingwolf on Apr 5, 2014 14:03:01 GMT
Saw him open he show with this, and that was me high as a kite for the next hour and a half.
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Post by colan on Apr 7, 2014 16:44:21 GMT
Totally real. Love it.
Now, there are plenty of references but there ain't a great deal of actual slide in this. I think you might like the Eastern connection though ;
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Post by slidingwolf on Apr 9, 2014 21:22:05 GMT
Totally real. Love it. Now, there are plenty of references but there ain't a great deal of actual slide in this. I think you might like the Eastern connection though ; Out of all those 60s guitar heros, JB's the only one, for me, who keeps doing original stuff. I love his stuff. And his bass player! How can she be so good at that age??? Thanks for posting.
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Post by slidingwolf on Jun 7, 2014 10:00:42 GMT
Not sure if this should go in here or not but I saw this duo on Thursday. Brilliant. Imagine Seasick Steve teamed up with Bonnie Raitt - except he's from Australia and she's from Ireland. And she plays percussion.
If you see them live, it's not entirely acoustic (there are el****ic guitars in there as well) but worth seeing just to hear her voice alone.
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Post by keithambridge on Jun 7, 2014 17:58:08 GMT
Here we have Knut Hem performing at the Kardamili Jazz festival, (where I live) lovely guy, great musician. I am seriously into lap slide now!
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Post by slidingwolf on Jun 28, 2014 13:27:29 GMT
Wonderful madness.
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Post by slidingwolf on Jul 18, 2014 19:26:49 GMT
Sad, sad loss. Nearly saw him about 10 or 12 years ago, but he was suffering from ill health even then.
Another great Texas blues man, dead and gone.
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