How to Play 12 Bar Shuffle Blues on a Lap Slide Guitar

Hi! And welcome LessonsWithTroy.com. On today’s lesson, we’re going to learn a dozen more open D tuning licks. So this is part two of all about open D tuning and this is going to be a dozen more open D licks, it’s a 12 licks and open D tuning. We have nice licks with the right hand, some nice open string licks, blues licks and hopefully when we’re done with this you’ll have a little bit more of your repertoire and understand a little bit more and probably maybe make up some of your own licks and open D tuning. Okay let’s go through this tuning and you can use my strings as your reference. Now I tell you what each string should be an open D tuning. The sixth string is a D. [Demonstration Okay if you’re in normal G-B-D, G-B-D dobro or resonator guitar tuning, you want to lower that 6th string all the way down to D. [Demonstration Okay the next string, your fifth string is going to be an A.. [Demonstration So you lower that down to an A if you’re in like I say at normal G-B-D, G-B-D tuning. This fifth string is an A. [Demonstration] Okay, your fourth string stays the same. That’s a D. [Demonstration] Okay your third string, you lower just down and a half step to an F#. [Demonstration] Okay and your second string is an A, you lower it down to an A. [Demonstration] Your first string stays the same. That’s a D. [Demonstration] So if you’re in normal A, like a said normal resonator guitar dobro tuning, G-B-D, G-B-D, this first one is going to stay the same in this first string here. [Demonstration] So that’s a D. So once again, D, A, D, F#, A, and D. [Demonstration] Okay and let’s get started with the first lick, lick number one. Lick number five is a fine one and I’m going to show you how to make a nice twelve bar blues out of it. It’s just a real standard triplet blues lick where you’re going to just use your thumb. I’m not using any other fingers other than my thumb for this lick. While I’m playing it, get it in your head then I’ll explain what I’m doing. [Demonstration] Okay. I’ll play a little slower. [Demonstration] Okay basically what I’m doing there— [Demonstration] You see I slide up to twelve with my bar. [Demonstration] I’m just hitting these three strings here with my third, second, and first string. [Demonstration] I’m doing that in the rhythm of a triplet rhythm. Which means I’m putting the three beats—three notes per beat in there—triplets just—the rhythm actually is the word triplet so— [Demonstration] Okay. So it’s— [Demonstration] In the next measure, I just slide up basically from eleven or ten and I’m on my third and second string there. [Demonstration] What you want to avoid here is when you hit your thumb, you don’t want your thumb to hit any other notes or strings other than what you want to. [Demonstration] So I slide up there to twelve and I’m just hitting my third and second string or after I do four sets of triplets there, my third, second and first string sliding basically into it from 10th fret or depending how dramatic of a slide you want. [Demonstration] So there’s the first measure of lick five. And then the second measure is— [Demonstration] I slide up to twelve of my third and second string and then— [Demonstration] And you kind of can hit either these three strings, my fifth, fourth, and third or just my fourth and third. And you don’t have to be exact with this. Just get the sound you’re looking for, that’s what I suggest. Okay so after I do that, just add a little bit of rhythm to it. [Demonstration] And right there I just go— [Demonstration] I just hit my base there, my sixth string on my 12th fret. [Demonstration] So on my sixth string 12th and now you go up and hit my fifth, fourth, and third string on my 12th twice and they go back to my sixth string. It’s just to kind of keep that beat going everything with my thumb too. [Demonstration] Okay so we’re in the key of D because this is an open D tuning. Okay, so this is going to be our one chord. Now you can do this as exact the same lick since you’re playing with a straight bar there on your 5th fret, and that’s going to be your G chord. [Demonstration] All right? Okay you know the exact same right. For your five chord here on your 7th fret is going to be A chord. So we’ve got 12th D, 5th fret G, and 7th fret A. Remember an open D tuning so it’s a little bit different than normal resonator tuning. [Demonstration] Okay so if you want to do just half of it instead of doing two measures, if you just want to do half of that lick, you can just do four sets of the triplet. [Demonstration] Okay so that’s what’s I’m going to do on the last part of this blues and I’m getting ready to show you. So once again, there’s the full lick— [Demonstration]