This tuning is also know as Vestapol tuning. Which makes for some interesting harmonic possibilities. Most players usually hold the slide parallel to the fret, which is a good general rule of thumb, for achieving accurate intonation across … The way you explain the tutorial is really helpful. Sorry I didn’t say this stuff was easy did I?…shucks. As always thanks for reading my Lawless Luke blog. I’ll probably do a blog on these ones in future. Which means you can play some pretty darn tasty bass lines and do some widdly blues stuff with the melody lines on the higher strings, if you’re a guitar ninja! This is great if your action is just a bit lower as it adds additional tension to the strings, and is more comparable to the tension of standard tuning. The slide guitar part to this song is in Open E Tuning. I toyed with adding these tunings in, but I didn’t want to overload people starting out. Standard tuning can be easier to play because your melodic instincts dont have to be translated to the altered tuning of the guitar; however, it can make it harder for the beginning slide guitarist to mu… This opens up some great opportunities for some real deep and dirty sounding blues. Slide guitar is a fun technique used in many styles including blues and folk. Open G tuning is also known as ‘Spanish’ tuning, don’t worry about this for now it’s just for reference. Pretty frickin’ sweet in my opinion. Learning the various different methods to tune for slide guitar will give you more options to let you suit the tunings to your playing style. Thanks Lawrene, glad it’s given you some insight. Below are five different types of open tuning… I’ll let you into a little secret; open A tuning and open G tuning are basically the same tuning, just with everything a tone higher! Damn you probably know even more major chords now than you did in standard tuning, and that can only be a good thing. The main tunings, open E and open A (which are the same, relatively speaking, as open D and open G), each have their specific idiomatic licks. It’s fluid, expressive and novel, and adds Grab a seat as I’d like to talk to you about open tunings for slide guitar. The slide doesn’t do that much, but what it does is very effective, even in small doses. The first and probably easiest thing to understand about the open tunings for slide guitar, is that they do one particularly magical thing; they give you a major chord when you play all the strings in unison. Required fields are marked *. Luke also creates Delta Blues Slide Guitar video’s on his youtube channel and writes about various topics including how to play Delta Blues Slide Guitar in his blog. Keep the rattle noise to a minimum when going from open strings to slide-stopped strings. Because the lower note is the fifth of the chord it makes for powerful-sounding licks. Slide guitar, at the beginning, can be quite tricky. Being used by some of those old blues cats such as Elmore James, Tampa Red & Kokomo Arnold, even modern day artist such as Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell made use of this tuning. He eventually got around to tuning a guitar to open D, placing it across his lap, and teaching himself to play slide with a socket wrench. Learning the various different methods to tune for slide guitar will give you more options to let you suit the tunings to your playing style. Don’t forget to check out my music and merch, and feel free to buy some stuff if you want to support me! If you’ve ever played the guitar with a slide, you know it can be tricky to play with in standard tuning. Robert Johnson and Bonnie Raitt are two well-known slide guitarists who play in open A. Subscribe to my newsletter now and claim your free download of my latest track (for a limited time only), plus get 10% off Lawless Luke merchandise in my shop! Open D is not limited to slide guitar and is sometimes referred to in country, folk, and blues music as Vestapol tuning, after a 19th-century song written about the Crimean war, “The Siege of Sevastopol.” For a demonstration of Vestapol tuning, here is your professor, Elizabeth Cotten, with “Vestapol.” Yes, she is playing upside down! Thanks for taking the time to read my latest Lawless Luke blog. Always great to hear the different ways to play. Now all you need to do is master the other stuff like new chord shapes, scales, intonation, proper slide technique. So when you stick a glass slide, medicine bottle, beer bottleneck or knife* along the fretboard, you get a major chord. The most prevalent is that an open tuning provides a major chord across all six strings, so holding the slide straight across at any fret yields a chord on any set of strings. “In those days [the late 1960s and early ’70s], there weren’t really any teaching materials Interesting fact; Bo Diddley’s self penned song of the same name made use of open E tuning. Standard tuning can be easier to play because your melodic instincts don’t have to be translated to the altered tuning of the guitar; however, it can make it harder for the beginning slide guitarist to mute the unwanted strings creating a dissonant sound. If you like the post please subscribe here for regular updates. This tuning is also know as Vestapol tuning. When playing particular music types, it’s often easier to tune your guitar so that chords are played instead of individual notes. Great question! It’s like you buy one you get one free! Nothing quite beats that deep low down dirty blues sound of open D tuning. Here are five technical tips to get you started. This lick is the characteristic sound of one of the most famous slide sounds of all time: “Dust My Broom” — a song originally by Robert Johnson with conventional fretting but covered in the most famous version by electric slide player Elmore James. I said you buy one…anyway you get the point. If you like the post please subscribe here for regular updates. Slide guitar can be played in standard or open tunings, and each has its advantages and disadvantages. Try not to worry yourself too much about having to learn new scale patterns, or chord shapes, at least you have major chords nailed. I’ve messed around with slide guitar tunings since 2005, and I love the way a slide sounds on the guitar. Open tuning provides more chordal harmony, but presents a “thinking” challenge as you translate your instincts to fit a different tuning. You’ll probably notice that this tuning makes use of an open G major triad (G-B-D). Standard tuning features the root of the chord on the top string and an interval of a fourth between the first and second strings. Open E is just a tone higher but all the intervals are identical. I KNOW, mind BLOWN right? Keith Richards is also a big fan of this tuning, using it on “Gimme Shelter“, “Honky Tonk Woman” and “Brown Sugar” to name a few. The following figure shows you a typical slide guitar lick tuned to open G. Click here to download and print this guitar tab. Open tunings have many technical advantages over standard tuning. This works well for many blues slide licks because they require only slight movement of a couple of frets above or below to play an entire passage. The simple answer is there isn’t a ‘correct’ open tuning for slide guitar. Subscribe to his newsletter to keep up to date, you can also browse his unique t shirts and other items in the shop. Open A has a real nice sound without much effort, It certainly does Joseph, thanks for commenting , Your email address will not be published. Open E (E, B, E, G#, B, E, low to high) is close to standard tuning because the top two strings are tuned the same. From low to high, the tuning is: C G C G C E. As you may know if you’ve done any single-note blues soloing with another guitar player or band, one of the great beauties of the minor pentatonic scale is the way the same phrases seem to work over all three chords of a blues progression. What this means is that once we retune the guitar to Open E we will be able to strum all 6 strings without fretting any … Duane Allman used open E tuning for the majority of his slide work, and if it’s okay for Duane, it’s okay for you! As always please leave a comment below. Thanks for sharing this. Lawless Luke is a Delta Blues Slide Guitar player & composer from Coventry, UK and specializes in composing new Delta Blues Slide Guitar music that takes influence from Delta Blues & Bottleneck Blues Slide Guitar. This is done using open tuning. Don’t worry though! Elmore James and Duane Allman (one of the greatest blues-rock slide guitarists and founder of the Allman Brothers Band) played in open E. Open D is the same as open E but tuned a whole step (two frets) lower (D, A, D, F#, A, D). Also, having a minor third interval between the top two strings allows for some idiomatic blues moves, especially the chromatic descending lick in thirds.