Slide Guitar for Beginners
Open Tuning - part 3

Lesson Sample

Teacher: Listen to the lesson sample, I'll be showing you how to play all the lead slide guitar solos. I used an electric guitar for the slide parts but you can use either electric or acoustic for the lead.

Teacher: This lesson is in open D tuning:

Open D tuning


Teacher: The three chords used in this familiar 12 bar blues progression are simply D - G - A. These are the "1 - 4 - 5" chords in D.

Teacher: Now that you're in the right tuning, the three chords can be simply played across the neck using your slide. Remember to keep your slide on top of the fret, not inbetween them.

chords


Teacher: The two solos you're about to learn have many riffs in them, all based around each chord during the progression. Here's the chord chart and jam track for this lesson:

chord chart


jam track in D

jaa: Is the jam track in standard tuning?

Teacher: jaa, the acoustic guitar in the jam track is also in the open D tuning. (If you used a guitar in standard tuning, you could strum the chords listed in the chord chart using standard fingering).

Teacher: Here's the first solo from the Lesson Sample. It's full of riffs that are positioned around each chord that is happening at the time. Notice during the first 4 bars (D chord) the slide riffs are based around the 12th fret D chord, then the riffs change position to the 5th fret (G chord) to match that chord etc.

solo 1


solo 1

MikeB: Lyle - What scale are you using for solo? Major ? Pentatonic?

Teacher: Mike, the riffs used for soloing come from each chord position. Take the D chord at the 12th fret, all those notes across the 12th fret are in the D major chord. The notes at the 10th fret are used to slide up to the chord. The resulting notes from the 10th and 12th frets are a combination of D major and minor pentatonic but mostly major pentatonic.

Teacher: Same thing happens for each of the other two chords at the 5th and 7th frets, G and A. During the progression you simply follow to the next chord with your slide.

Rokfish: Is there a preferred finger for the slide?

Teacher:  Yes, the 3rd or 4th fingers.

Teacher: Let's look at the second solo now:

solo 2


solo 2

Teacher: Solo 2 again stays right with each chord. I made the solo with repeating riffs so it wouldn't be too hard to memorize. You can loop the TAB playback to play along with me or use the jam track.

Teacher: Hope you enjoyed this lesson on the open D tuning.  If you are interested in receiving your own customized private lessons from me, simply email me at  Lyle@theguitar.net and I'll send you the information. Thanks, Lyle