Hey everybody, this is Brian Kahanek from iVideosongs.com, and I want to give you a little slide tutorial today, and this is a metal body Dobro which I think I prefer more than the wooden, just because it's got a more of and aggressive sound. I like to have that zing on the top of the note, and I got this guitar tuned to an open D tuning.
You have got a D here, you have got an A here, you got D here, F# here, A, and D, and the whole thing is really based around just really free chords of the 1, 4, and 5 chords. You have got the -- your 1 chord which is just -- that's your D and you are going to slide up, slide up to the fifth fret here, which is going to make your 4 chord and in the 5 chord, the A is right there.
So you are basically playing in the chord with the slide and this is just moving a nut around on the guitar as all the slide really does. And what I am doing there is really is real important to mix your fingers and your pick here, depends upon what you want to do. If you want to get little more nasty and a little grittier, with it and make some more noise, you want to flip up over to the pick and --.
And if you want to play with finger, you get up there and you get the chicken picking thing here and you get up there --. And how I am keeping it clean is a combination of things. The biggest thing is I like wear my slide when I am playing really electric or acoustic slide. As I like to wear my slide on my ring finger and I keep it right above that knuckle so I can bend it in and I can still play in a fretted notes if I want to and do that but at the same time you know I can just switch right over the slide and also right there.
And the biggest thing is to I support the slide with my pinky and my index finger here. Actually this is my middle finger here and I just keep it balanced there so it's not going to move around like I have got real control, so it will slap around in the fret and got all that nasty noise. And really I think the key to real clean slide playing after that is you sliding it up the neck and you index finger first finger here is following along muting behind it, so really you are only catching the strings with the slide that you want to hear.
If I play it -- for instance if I just went -- which is cool if you want to get that real nasty. But the difference is when you mute with the index finger is this --. That's a real night and day feel to it. And I am mixing in a lot of banjo licks and country licks in the middle of this because it's got that kind of country hold down rhythm but at the same time it's got a real delta blues feel to it. And I am going to add basically a major suspension here.
And you will see when I am coming up here, I am just playing the Octave. I am just up here playing in the D. All those notes are coming out of the pentatonic scale for the most part and really the trick to it is when you are playing an open tuning, you got to spin a lot of time. You know figuring out where the sweet spots are, especially with this F# tune in middle it will throw you off if you are careful and you can hit one of those clamps in there just like --.
You know that's not the right one. So you got to be careful in that third string to make sure you are transposing it right. And then some of the other highlights of what I just played earlier. I think I am doing a lot of -- I love to chicken pick and the Claw and I get a lot of that from Albert Lee and some great country players; Vince Gil is one of my favorite player. He is amazing. Brad Paisley is great.
Some of the new guys are amazing. Then you have got Mark Knopfler which is I think tops for me in tone and __ that. So they all play really great. And I think the biggest thing is just like I have to intermingle that stuff so it's not just straight slide but you have got a little variety and I will pull and lick like this. So some of the elements that I am using in the licks that I am using for some of the turnarounds. I like to add some of the chicken picking stuff in there. And what I am going to do is it's one those things you really got to be a cognitive of the fact that your guitar tuned a little differently and you have to move the scales around. So it's going to take a little time for you to get to lay with the line with the new tuning, but just in this tuning in particular this is a really cool little turn around here.
It's a little bit slower that's -- and if you are especially playing the top two notes and you are picking just like this, you tucking the pick away. Another one I really dig is on, if you want to come from the bass side of it and turn it around on the bass side, you will get some really nasty little quarter step bends and something like this.
Some kind of multi effect, it feels like I am kind of bump and turn around the bub, bub, bub but not with that note. So that gives you a place to go when you are going to turn the phrase and make the turn around on the blues and just getting into some influences with slide guitar that really brought me into wanting to play slide. I mean it's just obviously from the sound of that singing, crying tone, and it's just heart breaking almost but some of the players that really brought me in were more contemporary until I found some of the older guys.
The guy who really turn me on was a guy by the name of Chris Whitley and his record 'Living with the law' had a different spin on that and it was a new earth blues that he was playing. And I highly recommend you get that record. It's just incredible. And then you got like modern masters like Derek Trucks and Warren Haynes, and guys like that that are out there just singing with the two and their tone is impeccable. But then you will kind of follow it back where they picked it up from and you get into Elmore James and Robert Johnson. You get right back to that and you can spend the rest of your life playing great slide and great Dobro and I think Robert Johnson proved that.
You know you can spend what is it -- I can't remember how many tunes he did but it's rest of your life trying to figure how to sing and play and do all at the same time. But anyway, enough of the yack and let me do a little more playing for you. I will play it out here and I am going to add a couple little different ideas in here and play a little more single note stuff, so you get an idea of how I am doing it and I am doing a lot of the chicken picking on the single note patterns.
Playing the sixth here, the second and the fourth string. You can tell the difference between playing with your fingers or playing with the pick. This thing has a difference feeling and it's a really a matter of choice and whatever your preferability is, what your ears is going to hear, and what you want. So here is a little something on the way out.
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