As I’m sure you’ve been able to tell, standard tuning slide offers its own set of challenges and rules. Best of all, it also has some of the more unusual licks and positions to be achieved within slide guitar, and in this lesson we will address some of those ideas.
As you’ll see in the licks that I’m teaching here, the “block” chords that occur in the A and Em forms are the most useful for creating “box” position runs that are so necessary to the success of good slide playing. There also is, because of the standard tuning, a nice 6th note position that is so convenient we simply HAVE to use it!
This 6th gives birth to certain nice, almost Hawaiian, or Western Swing-type runs, as well as simply helping us with blues and country phrases, just the way it would if we were playing standard guitar. This, of course, lends itself to some interesting phrases and licks that we wouldn’t normally come up with unless we had that particular note to play with.
Most of all, I want you to try some of your own ideas after you’ve seen mine here, because that is what I hope to do always; to spark your own creativity. Enjoy!—Arlen Roth
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