Slide Guitar Z2A Blog
Our rantings about slide guitar. We try to keep it interesting.
Posted 2/24/26
What Can Slide Guitar Do For You? Freedom!
By Dirk Johnson
Bio at end of article
Discuss this blog post on our sub-Reddit at r/SlideGuitarZ2A
Welcome to the first edition of the SlideGuitarZ2A blog.
Just to qualify, I'm no star in this world. I am just another guitar player and teacher.
About ten years ago I decided to explore slide guitar. Also, one of my students had some physical challenges playing fretted guitar and wanted to give it a try. The learning material that I found did not fit they way I teach, so I created my own. I'd been teaching private-lesson fretted guitar for a while, and I had developed the ability to create guitar lesson material that worked well.
I understand a student's need for granular instruction materials that build incrementally on established skills. With that in mind, I've developed hundreds of notation/tablature pieces over the years for my students.
I learned what works and what doesn't when sitting face-to-face with a student. So why not apply that to the slide guitar realm?
I've also sought out some skilled advice, and have had the good fortune to spend some classroom time with some slide guitar pros like Scott Ainslie and Jon Shain. Please check them out. They are masters of this style.
That all morphed into this website and the Slide Guitar Basics book, and here we are.
But enough about me. Let's explore what can slide guitar do for you?
There is far more to slide guitar than it appears at first glance. If you grasp this, then it might just change the entire way that you look at playing guitar.
Here is What the Slide Provides: Freedom!
At first, slide guitar appears confining. You can't do everything that you can do on a standard tuned, fretted guitar. And yes, the slide culture is often swimming in Lake 12 Bar Blues, which is OK, but it's also limiting.
After a while of playing with a slide and exploring more than the 12 bar format, you may have a few welcome revelations!
Slide Guitar is Freedom
In no particular, order, playing slide can give you:
* Freedom from short finger limitations
Many of the world-renowned fretted guitar players have rather long fingers. Just like many pro basketball players are over 6 feet tall. That's just raw truth. Size matters.
I've never been a "you can accomplish anything you set your mind to" type of person. I'm the complete opposite, maybe because I've confronted that reality my entire life. Instead, hopefully, we all find our own advantages. Size isn't everything!
But...It's very liberating to stop attempting the impossible!
* Freedom from fret hand physical challenges
Damaged fingers from accidents or health conditions can often be overcome with a slide. Maybe they can still make music with a guitar. Maybe they can extend their playing years with a focus on slide.
This is something I'd like to see become much better known in the guitar culture. Playing slide guitar expands the community.
* Freedom from notes played per second
Playing licks at extreme speed is a hallmark of a lot of fretted genres. Fans tend to focus on it and, yeah, I'm guilty of that, too.
With a slide, it's rarely about speed. The slide itself is a bit of a speed bump.
Instead, sldie guitar is entirely about emotion and style and phrasing and extracting musicality from the instrument. Playing slide can be a musical lauchpad .
* Freedom from the technical demands
Speed is just one aspect. Many fretted genres can have layers of technical mountains to climb before a player is considered accomplished. That's not so with a slide.
Sure, there are some basic technical hurdles to clear, and many are unique to slide guitar, but after that, it's all about art. Your own art. Your own ability to evoke a response from a listener.
* Freedom from the twelve notes
Certainly, there are other musical instruments that allow for unlimited pitch variation, but slide guitar is somewhat unique in that realm.
Even the violin family uses finger pressure to set pitch, whereas a slide rides on the strings, so you can vary the pitch very distinctly. It truly does provide some rather unique musical opportunities.
The ability to mimic the human voice and glean human emotion from a stringed instrument with a slide is profound. But then, we must also admit that a slide can mimic an alley cat in heat if we are not careful. :)
* Freedom from established repertoire
With fretted guitar genres, there's often a laundry list of "standard songs" to be slayed. The coming-of-age pieces, like Classical Gas and the rest. Each genre has it's own repertoire.
With slide, there are far fewer "old standards". By and large, that's not what players are doing with a slide. Slide guitar is all about what YOU do with it, and less about mimicking what others have already done. It's forward looking, with an eye on tradition.
* Freedom from right and wrong
Quite literally, everyone who plays slide does it their own way. They choose their own slides, guitars, strings, picks (or not), repertoire, and they even develop their own slide techniques. They create their own unique sound and their own unique vibe. There's no right or wrong. It's all just music.
So playing slide guitar can be truly liberating in many ways for many of us. You're no longer benchmarking against a well-established army of players who've played longer, studied more, and have God-given physical attributes that set them apart. We can all appreciate what they can do musically, but we'll never be them.
The slide allows the rest of us the opportunity to focus almost exclusively on our own musical expression, with far less underlying technical demand.
* It can be liberating.
Writing this blog post has been liberating. While these ideas have been stewing in my head for a while, I've never articulated them so thoroughly until now.
At age 68, I'm looking ahead with this attitude. I hope this realization also inspires you to play slide guitar with renewed focus and motivation, as well.
Thanks for listening!
Discuss this blog post on our sub-Reddit at r/SlideGuitarZ2A
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About the Author: Dirk Johnson is the SlideGuitarZ2A website editor, and has been teaching private lesson guitar for over twenty years in Sterling VA USA.
His focus has been on various acoustic styles, including blues fingerstyle and slide, folk, country, and acoustic rock.
Due to time limitations and other business obligations, he is no longer taking on new students.
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