There has been a lot of slide guitar talk around here in recent days.
Some of you, who don’t play guitar, may be scratching your heads.
What’s the fascination?
One thing is this; slide playing lends itself to individuality. There is no “proper” way to do it.
This little video is interesting to me because, it is a longer version of the little snippet that appears on the Little Feat compilation record, “Hoy Hoy!”, that has Lowell George espousing the practical benefits of the Sears Craftsman 11/16 socket, for use as a slide.
In the clip, Lowell gives an overview of slide playing, does a brief version of “China White” with the guys adding nice harmonies and shucks and jives with a couple of German interviewers. It’s fun.
I said blow away, blow away
This cruel reality
And keep me from its storm
Suspicion has crept in, and ruined my life
I’m messed up, and hassled, and wornWell its pure indignation
Just another sensation
And I’d like to knock on that door
But the boy he keeps on callin’ for moreYes and my sweet China White
She ain’t here tonight
And love has robbed me blindSo cast away, cast away
From this ball full of pain
For it sinks beneath the wavesYes and my sweet China White
She ain’t here tonight
Oh and love has robbed me blindSome sweet Maureen has robbed me blind
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Tags: Guitar, Little Feat, Lowell George, sears craftsman, shucks, slide, Slide Guitar
Sans Direction wrote,
There’s another thing. Modern tuning is a hack. It kinda works, but it doesn’t really work. The major third is too sharp, and electronic distortion exacerbates the problem. Most rock music is minor these days. Because everyone is as mopey as Morrissey reading Plath? No, because our rigs sound better if we play a minor third or if we skip the third altogether.
But harmonically, the real third is a bit back from the major third we’ve been told about. And the real note is somewhere between the sixth and the dominant seventh. You can get there with bending, but that’s hard. And it’s easy as pie with a slide. If a player is good, he can use a slide to get exactly to the right note.
Of course, if a player is bad, nothing in this world sounds worse.
Sans Direction’s last blog post..If you keep pickin’ that thing, it’ll never heal
Link | April 1st, 2008 at 11:09 am
Pribek wrote,
Double Yahtzee!! for “mopey as Morrissey reading Plath”
Good points, Sans.
One thing I noticed early on was that if I’m just sitting around the yard playing some blues in an open tuning, I will have tendency to defy temperament and tune the third to a perfect interval. It makes a fat, gorgeous, rich chord. But, when playing with a band, especially with a keyboard player-it’s not going to work because the whole western world is set up to work in a tempered tuning.
It all started to go south with Pythagoras.
Link | April 1st, 2008 at 12:15 pm
PatrickisnoAprilFool wrote,
Pythons in the grass? what? so I scratch my head a lot…
I am the listener, and your auspicious audience… whether you guys are playing with skirl bagpipe and horn battle march, or what… it is an emotional effect when you slide on your axes; and true there can be nothing worse than a bad piper… so I have heard 2% slide attempts.
I like how Lowell bogarts his fag… and Germania asks “Can you show us something more difficult…?”
Sheeeez, you can take the German out of the Lutheran Church, but not all the way. I think Sans is without Sans and is just Direction now that I hear his modal argument on efficient sliding, no?
From the engineer’s bell book: Full ahead engines; hard over rudder–
And now for our Sylvia Plath moment of truncated prose on pruning the pear tree….
PatrickisnoAprilFool’s last blog post..MooPig’s: Report from the Middle… Schooler
Link | April 1st, 2008 at 5:30 pm