Slide guitar is a particular technique for playing the guitar that is often used in blues-style music. The technique involves placing an object against the strings while playing to create glissando effects and deep vibratos that make the music emotionally expressive. It typically involves playing the guitar in the traditional position (flat against the body) with the use of a tubular "slide" fitted on one of the guitarist's fingers. The slide may be a metal or glass tube like the neck of a bottle. The term "bottleneck" was historically used to describe this type of playing. The strings are typically plucked while the slide is moved over the strings to change the pitch. The guitar may also be placed on the player's lap and played with a hand-held bar and is then referred to as "lap slide guitar" or "lap steel guitar".
Creating music with a slide of some type has been traced back to primitive stringed instruments in African culture and also to the origin of the steel guitar in Hawaii. Near the beginning of the twentieth century, blues musicians in the Mississippi Delta popularized the bottleneck slide guitar style, and the first recording of slide guitar was by Sylvester Weaver in 1923. Since the 1930s, performers including Robert Nighthawk, Earl Hooker, Elmore James and Muddy Waters popularized slide guitar in the electric blues genre and influenced later slide guitarists in the rock genre including the Rolling Stones, George Harrison, Duane Allman and Ry Cooder.
Video Slide guitar
History
The technique of using a hard object against a plucked string goes back to the "diddley bow" derived from a one-stringed African instrument. The "diddley bow" is believed to be one of the ancestors of the bottleneck style. When sailors from Europe introduced the Spanish guitar to Hawaii in the latter nineteenth century, the Hawaiians slackened some of the strings from the standard tuning to make a chord--this became known as "slack-key" guitar, today referred to as an open tuning. With the "slack-key" the Hawaiians found it easy to play a three-chord song by moving a piece of metal along the fretboard and began to play the instrument across the lap. Near the end of the nineteenth century, a Hawaiian named Joseph Kekuku used a steel bar against guitar strings. The bar was called the "steel" and was the source of the name "steel guitar". Kekuku popularized the method and some sources claim he originated the technique. He moved to the United States and became a vaudeville performer, later performing in Europe for several years. In the first half of the twentieth century, the so-called "Hawaiian guitar" style of playing spread to the United States. Sol Hoopii was an influential Hawaiian guitarist who in 1919, at age 17, came to United States from Hawaii as a stow-away on a ship heading for San Francisco. Hoopii's playing became popular in the late 1920s and he recorded songs like "Hula Blues" and "Farewell Blues". According to author Pete Madsen, "[Hoopii's playing] would influence a legion of players from rural Mississippi."
Most players of blues slide guitar were from the southern United States, particularly the Mississippi Delta, and their music was likely from an African origin handed down to African-American sharecroppers who sang as they toiled in the fields. The earliest Delta blues musicians were largely solo singer-guitarists. W. C. Handy commented on the first time he heard slide guitar in 1903, when a blues player performed in a local train station: "As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularised by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars. The effect was unforgettable." Blues historian Gerard Herzhaft notes that Tampa Red was one of the first black musicians inspired by the Hawaiian guitarists of the beginning of the century, and he managed to adapt their sound to the blues. As an example, Tampa Red, as well as Kokomo Arnold, Casey Bill Weldon and Oscar Woods, adopted the Hawaiian mode of playing longer melodies with the slide instead of playing short riffs as they had done previously.
In the early twentieth century, steel guitar playing divided into two streams: bottleneck-style, performed on a traditional Spanish guitar; and lap-style, performed on an instrument specifically designed for the purpose of being played on the performer's lap. The bottleneck-style was typically associated with blues music and was popularized by African-American blues artists. The Mississippi Delta was the home of Robert Johnson, Son House, Charlie Patton, and other blues pioneers. The first known recording of the bottleneck style was in 1923 by Sylvester Weaver, who recorded two instrumentals, "Guitar Blues" and "Guitar Rag". Some of the blues artists who most prominently used the slide include Robert Johnson (sample above), Charley Patton, Son House, Bukka White, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Kokomo Arnold, Furry Lewis, Big Joe Williams, Tampa Red and Casey Bill Weldon.
Maps Slide guitar
Influential early electric slide guitarists
When the guitar was electrified in the 1930s, it allowed solos on the instrument to be more audible, and thus more prominently featured. In the 1940s, players like Robert Nighthawk and Earl Hooker popularized electric slide guitar; but, unlike their predecessors, they used standard tuning. This allowed them switch between slide and fretted guitar playing readily, which was an advantage in rhythm accompaniment.
Robert Nighthawk
Robert Nighthawk (born Robert Lee McCollum) recorded extensively in the 1930s as "Robert Lee McCoy" with bluesmen like John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson (also known as Sonny Boy Williamson I). Nighthawk performed on acoustic guitar in a style influenced by Tampa Red. Sometime around World War II, after changing his last name to "Nighthawk" (from one of his songs), he became an early proponent of electric slide guitar and adopted a metal slide. Herzhaft describes his sound (although he uses the term "bottleneck"):
Nighthawk developed an extremely clean style ... [His] subtle use of the electric guitar, whose strings he barely touched with his bottleneck, gave his music an exquisite and smooth sound that made his titles blues masterpieces.
Nighthawk helped popularize Tampa Red's "Black Angel Blues" (later called "Sweet Little Angel"), "Crying Won't Help You", and "Anna Lou Blues" (as "Anna Lee") in his electric slide style - songs which later became part of the repertoire of Earl Hooker, B.B. King, and others. Nighthawk's style influenced Muddy Waters and Hooker and is credited as one who helped bridge music from the Delta into the Chicago blues style of "electric blues".
Earl Hooker
As a teenager, Earl Hooker (a cousin of John Lee Hooker) sought out Nighthawk as his teacher and in the late 1940s, the two toured the South extensively. Nighthawk had a lasting impact on Hooker's playing; however, by the time of his 1953 recording of "Sweet Angel" (a tribute of sorts to Nighthawk's "Sweet Little Angel"), "Hooker had by now transcended his teacher", according to biographer Sebastian Danchin. Danchin also notes that his solos had an uncanny resemblance to the human singing voice and music writer Andy Grigg commented: "He had the uncanny ability to make his guitar weep, moan and talk just like a person ... his slide playing was peerless, even exceeding his mentor, Robert Nighthawk." The vocal approach is heard in Hooker's instrumental "Blue Guitar", which was later overdubbed with a unison vocal by Muddy Waters and became "You Shook Me". Unusual for a blues player, in the 1960s, Hooker explored using a wah-wah pedal to further emulate the voice.
Elmore James
Possibly the most influential electric blues slide guitarist of his era was Elmore James, who gained prominence with a his 1951 song "Dust My Broom", a remake of Robert Johnson's 1936 song, "I Believe I'll Dust My Broom". It features James' playing a series of triplets throughout the song which Rolling Stone magazine called "one immortal lick" and is heard in many blues songs to this day. Although Johnson had used the figure on several songs, James' overdriven electric sound made it "more insistent, firing out a machine-gun triplet beat that would become a defining sound of the early rockers", according to historian Ted Gioia. Unlike Nighthawk and Hooker, James' used a full-chord glissando effect with an open E tuning and a bottleneck. Other popular songs by James, such as "It Hurts Me Too" (first recorded by Tampa Red), "The Sky Is Crying", "Shake Your Moneymaker", feature his slide playing.
Muddy Waters
Blues singer, harmonica player, and guitarist Muddy Waters (born McKinley Morganfield) was the leading figure in 1950s Chicago blues style. His influence on blues music cannot be overstated. He took the music he had heard on Stovall's Plantation in Mississippi and brought it to Chicago. His first hit on Chess Records was "Rollin' Stone", which later spawned the name for "the Rolling Stones" band. In the 1950s, many top blues players of the era passed through Waters' band.
Slide guitar in 1960s rock music
The sound of the slide guitar spread to rock music in the 1960s, popularized by British groups like the Rolling Stones. The Stones featured a slide guitar in their recording of "I Wanna Be Your Man" as far back as 1963. The Stones' Brian Jones was one of the first British guitarists to play slide guitar. His performance on their 1964 single "Little Red Rooster" may have been the first slide guitar song to reach number one on the British charts. Jones' successor playing slide in the Stones was Mick Taylor, a 20 year old virtuoso who performed on Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street. The album Let It Bleed features Keith Richards on slide guitar for the majority of the album.
The sound of electric slide spread to American bands including Paul Butterfield. Butterfield, a harmonica player and Chicago native, frequented clubs there in the late 1950s where he was encouraged by established artists Muddy Waters and Little Walter who allowed him to sit in on jam sessions. Guitarists in Butterfield's band included MIke Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop who were among the performers in the early 1960s who merged rock music with blues using slide guitar. George Harrison performed on slide guitar with the Beatles in the 1965 songs "Drive My Car", and "Run For Your Life". Harrison also used slide in his solo career on songs such as "My Sweet Lord" and he played slide in the Traveling Wilburys as well as on the Beatles' 1995 and 1996 reunion singles "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love".
Duane Allman played a role in bringing slide guitar into Southern rock with the Allman Brothers Band, and with Eric Clapton's "Derek and the Dominos" on the Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs album. Allman, who died in a motorcycle accident at age 24, was referred to by NPR's Nick Morrison as "the most inventive slide guitarist of his era". He extended the role of the slide guitar by mimicking the harmonica effects of Sonny Boy Williamson II, most clearly in the Allman Brothers' cover version of Sonny Boy's "One Way Out", recorded live at the Fillmore East and heard on their album Eat a Peach.
Ry Cooder is another influential slide guitarist in rock music. At age 15, Cooder began working on bottleneck guitar techniques, learning the songs of Robert Johnson, and was called a teen prodigy in the 1960s He was named by Rolling Stone in 2003 as number eight on their list of the "100 Greatist Guitarists of All Time". He collaborated with the Rolling Stones on recording sessions and is credited with showing their guitarist, Keith Richards, the open G tuning which Richards then adopted in songs such as "Gimme Shelter", "Jumping Jack Flash", "Start Me Up" and "Brown Sugar".
Slide guitar technique
The slide guitar, according to music educator Keith Wyatt, can be thought of as a "one-finger fretless guitar". The slide functions as a finger, and is a hollow tube usually fitted over the ring or little finger. The slide is pressed lightly against the strings to avoid hitting against the frets, and is kept parallel with them. The frets are used only as a visual reference, and playing in tune without them requires additional skill. In this playing technique the player's remaining fingers and thumb still have access to the frets, and may be used for playing rhythmic accompaniment or reaching additional notes. The guitar itself may be tuned in the traditional tuning or an open tuning. Most early blues players used open tunings, but most modern slide players use both. The major limitation of slide playing is that only one chord shape is easily available and that is dictated by how the guitar is originally tuned. Two-note intervals can be played by slanting the slide on certain notes (see photo).
In the sixteenth century, the notes of A-D-G-B-E were adopted as a tuning for guitar-like instruments, and the low E was added later to make E-A-D-G-B-E as the standard guitar tuning. In open tuning, the strings are tuned to sound a chord when not fretted, and is most often major. Open tunings commonly used with slide guitar include "open D'" or Vestapol tuning: D-A-D-F?-A-D; and open G or Spanish tuning: D-G-D-G-B-D. The latter is the tuning introduced to Keith Richards by Ry Cooder. Open E and open A, formed by raising each of those tunings a whole tone, are also common. Other tunings are also used, in particular the "drop D" tuning (low E string tuned down to D) is used by many slide players. This tuning allows for power chords, which contain root, fifth and eighth (octave) notes in the bass strings and conventional tuning for the rest of the strings. Delta blues pioneer Robert Johnson, whose playing has been cited by Clapton, Hendrix, Richards, and Winter as being a powerful influence on them, used tunings of: standard, open G, open D , and drop D.
Slides
A slide can be made with any type of smooth hard material that allows tones to resonate. Different materials cause subtle differences in sustain, timbre, and loudness, and glass or metal are the most common choices.
Improvised slides are common, including pipes, rings, spoons, and even stones. Pink Floyd founder Syd Barrett was fond of using a Zippo lighter as a slide, but this was largely for special effects. Glass bottles, such as beer bottles, are common, and Duane Allman (Derek and the Dominos, Allman Brothers Band) used a glass Coricidin medicine bottle. Blues guitarist CeDell Davis used a butterknife.
Nick Manoloff patented the "bakelite tone bar" in 1937, made of a plastic-like substance, no longer used, but these have become a collector's item. Necks cut from bottles, segments of copper or PVC plumbing pipe, and even deep length wrench sockets have been used by those who do not choose to use a commercial product. Some artists have used a commonly available disposable cigarette lighter, oval in shape, as a slide. With the actual lighter mechanism sawed off, the remaining barrel is called a "fireslide" which has been produced commercially.
Lap slide guitar
The lap slide guitar is not a specific instrument, but refers to a style of playing, usually blues or rock music, with the instrument on the performer's lap. There are various instruments specifically made to play in the table-top position, including:
- Steel guitars including lap steel, console steel and pedal steel, in which a solid metal bar, typically referred to as a "steel", is pressed against the strings and is the source of the name "steel guitar"
- Resonator guitars, particularly National or Dobro-style, often used in blues music, bluegrass, and country music
- The Weissenborn guitar, an acoustic lap steel with a hollow neck and body, invented in the 1920s
Instruments made specifically for the use of a steel are played horizontally, on the player's lap or otherwise supported. Proper terminology for the hand-held bar used is "steel" or "tone bar" rather than "slide". Nevertheless, the term "lap slide" coexists with "lap steel" to describe the same instrument played in a different style. "Slide" usually connotes blues or rock music. The steel is held in the non-dominant hand and pressed against the strings and moved horizontally to change the pitch. The ring and little finger usually rest on the strings to block unwanted overtones. The instruments are designed with the strings relatively high off the fingerboard to allow for more pressure from a heavier steel without hitting the fingerboard. Actual frets may not exist on these instruments, only visual markers where the frets would normally be. The guitars have reinforced necks, often square, to withstand high tunings that would not be supported by the slimmer neck of a traditional guitar. The steel chosen may be in many different shapes and styles and is a matter of personal preference of the performer. The most common steel is a solid metal cylinder with one end rounded into a bullet shape, about 7/8 inch (2.2 centimetres) in diameter and 3 3/8 inches (8.6 centimetres) in length. Some lap slide guitar players choose a steel with a deep indentation or groove on each side so it can be held firmly (see photo), and may have squared-off ends. The better grip facilitates playing the rapid vibratos in blues music. This design, often used by resonator guitar players, facilitates hammer-on and pull-off notes. The lap instruments are typically plucked with the dominant hand, with or without finger picks. On occasion, an artist may use a flat pick. Both hands may be involved another important function--to dampen or mute unwanted strings and to stop notes in staccato passages to prevent notes from running together.
The "resophonic" or resonator guitar, invented in the late 1920s, has often been employed for slide playing and is sometimes called the "Dobro" after its inventors, the Dopyera brothers. "Dobro" is an acronym of DOpyera and BROthers. The invention predated the electric guitar, and its purpose was to make the guitar louder. A resonator guitar features a large metal cone, resembling a loudspeaker, attached under the bridge of the guitar to increase its volume. Delta blues pioneer, Son House, played a resonator guitar on many songs including the classic, "Death Letter". A resonator guitar with a metal body was played by Bukka White ("Parchman Farm Blues"). Nashvillian Jerry Douglas, called by Guitar Player magazine as "arguably the best known lap slide guitarist ever", has spanned several genres of music on slide guitar, with nine Grammys for his performances.
In the 1920's, Hermann Weissenborn manufactured an acoustic lap guitar which bears his name. It has a hollow neck which creates a larger resonant chamber than the body alone and therefore has more volume. The Weissenborn is coveted by some acoustic lap steel enthusiasts who believe it has a superior tone.
See also
- Electric blues
- Electric guitar
- Steel guitar
- Lap steel guitar
- List of slide guitarists
- Pedal steel guitar
Footnotes
Notes
References
- Aldin, Mary Katherine (1997). Robert Lee McCoy: The Bluebird Recordings 1937-1938 (CD booklet). Robert Lee McCoy. New York City: RCA Records. 07863 67416-2.
- Dahl, Bill (1996). "Robert Nighthawk". In Erlewine, Michael. All Music Guide to the Blues. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books. ISBN 0-87930-424-3.
- Danchin, Sebastian (2001). Earl Hooker: Blues Master. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 1-57806-306-X.
- Fetherhoff, Bob (2014). The Guitar Story: From Ancient to Modern Times. BookBaby. ISBN 978-1483516837. Retrieved October 31, 2017.
- Dicaire, David (1999). Blues Singers: Biographies of 50 Legendary Artists of the Early 20th Century. New York City: Mc Farland. ISBN 978-0786406067. Retrieved October 16, 2017.
- Grigg, Andy (1999). Earl Hooker: Simply the Best (CD notes). Earl Hooker. Universal City, California: MCA Records. MCAD-11811.
- Herzhaft, Gerard (1992). Encyclopedia of the Blues. Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press. ISBN 1-55728-252-8.
- Inaba, Mitsutoshi (2011). Willie Dixon: Preacher of the Blues. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-6993-6.
- Masden, Pete (2005). Slide Guitar. Backbeat Books. ISBN 0-87930-852-4.
- Moore, Allan (2003). The Cambridge Companion to Blues and Gospel Music. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1107494534.
- Oliver, Paul (1988). Blues Off the Record : Thirty Years of Blues Commentary (Repr. ed.). New York City: Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0306803215. Retrieved October 30, 2017.
- Russell, Tony (1997). The Blues: From Robert Johnson to Robert Cray. Dubai: Carlton Books. ISBN 1-85868-255-X.
- Ruymar, Lorene (1996). The Hawaiian Steel Guitar and Its Great Hawaiian Musicians. Anaheim, California: Centerstream Publishing. ISBN 1-57424-021-8. Retrieved September 12, 2017.
- Sokolow, Fred (1996). Slide Guitar for the Rock Guitarist. Pacific, Missouri: Mel Bay Publications. ISBN 978-1610655637. Retrieved October 8, 2017.
- Tracy, Steven C., Editor; Evans, David (1999). Write Me a Few of Your Lines: A Blues Reader. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-205-4. CS1 maint: Extra text: authors list (link)
- Unterberger, Richie; Koda, Cub (1996). "Blues Slide Guitar". In Erlewine, Michael. All Music Guide to the Blues. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books. ISBN 0-87930-424-3.
- Volk, Andy (2003). Lap Steel Guitar. Anaheim, California: Centerstream Publications. ISBN 1-57424-134-6.
External links
- The Magic and Mystery of Slide Guitar - an exhibit curated by the Museum of Making Music (NAMM Foundation) detailing the history and evolution of slide guitar technique
- Open-G tuning, Open-E tuning and Slide guitar - an overview of Open-G and Open-E slide
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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