Easy Open G Blues With Slide For Acoustic Guitar – Blues Guitar Lesson With Darrin Goodman

Show Tabs

Hey, everybody. How’s it going? This is Darren Goodman with guitarcontrol.com, bringing you this lesson. Today, I want to show you a easy 12 bar Blues using a slide in open G tuning. So be sure to click on the link in the description for the tabs and let’s get close up and take a look. All right, so the first thing you’re going to want to do is put your guitar into open G tuning. The sixth string, we’re going to tune that down to a D, and then your fifth string, you’re going to tune that up to a G. Fourth string stays the same as a D. Third string stays the same as a G. Second string stays the same as a B, and first string tuned down to a D.

All right, and then this is really aimed at the beginners who are just really new to working with slide guitar. I’m using a metal slide, you could use glass. I just like the way the metal one sounds, especially on this guitar. As far as the guitar, what I’ve done here is this is just a really cheap acoustic guitar and it’s great for playing slide. You don’t have to have one that’s just perfectly set up. Like I said, this is a really inexpensive guitar and the action up here towards the higher end is a little high, but it works really well for slide.

So when I use the slide, I put it on my fourth finger. You might, you know, maybe it’s more comfortable if you have it on your third finger, but I just personally prefer it on my fourth finger. The technique when you’re using the slide is that you want to have your other fingers, you don’t want just the slide, because then you get the other strings making a lot of racket that you don’t want. So if you just take your other fingers and just rest them on the string, so that way when you play a single string, you don’t hear the other notes, or the other strings rather, making a bunch of noise. You just want to rest them, so that way you can isolate just the notes that you want to be playing, you know, single notes. In this case, we’re playing multiple notes at the same time.

All right, so we start off just by strumming all of the strings open. Then you’re going to strum again, so that’s like an eighth note. So it’s like one, and then on the and of one, you strum just the first four strings open. So, one and. Then I just use my second finger here, I’m going to go to the third fret on the first string, and now I’m just going to strum the first four strings but I’m also fretting the third fret of the first string. Now I strum the first four strings open, and now I move that note from the third fret to the second fret, and I use my first finger, and then the strings open again.

So that’s like one, and, two, and, three, and. Then my second finger goes to the third fret of the third string, and I’m going to pick that and slide up a half step to the fourth fret. These are 16th notes, and then I follow that just with the first two strings open. So that’s the first measure. You just have the, and then that repeats. You have the first four measures, first four bars, is just that. So this would be your one chord.

All right, so now for the four chord is where we’re going to use the slide. You’re just going to slide up to the seventh fret, or excuse me, not the seventh fret, the fifth fret, and you’re going to play just the first four strings. So, where you position the slide, like if you were just going to bar across those strings, you’d put it in the middle of the frets just like normal. But with the slide, you don’t want to be back in the middle because then you’ll be slightly flat. You want to bring the slide up so you’re right over the bar, and do a little bit of vibrato back and forth a little bit, so that way it just sounds a little bit sweeter, and that way you’re not just sitting, in case you’re just slightly flat or slightly sharp, you’re not just sitting there. Because that doesn’t really sound very good.

So when we do the slide there, we’re playing a whole measure of eighth notes. So it’s like, one and two, and three and four, and. And then slide out. Coming out of the previous part, and then you do that same little lick again. So we’re back to the third fret of the third string, and then back. That’s bars five and six, so, so far we have…

And then back into two more bars of the one chord. Now we’re going to do basically the same thing that we did to the four chord, but we’re going to go to the five chord. So now we’re going to slide up to the seventh fret, and then back to the four chord, back to five, and then follow it with that little riff again. So, starting where we go to the five chord, and then this leads us into our turnaround. For the turnaround, you’re going to take your first finger and you’re going to bar it. You’re going to bar it across the first and second string at the third fret, and then put your third finger a half step above, so on the fourth fret of the third string, and now you’re going to strum the first four strings, so the fourth string is open. Whoops.

You just simply move that down, so first finger is on the third fret, second finger is on the fourth fret, and then move it down a half step, move it down a half step again, and then just follow that with the strings open. Then you can just simply just start over again. Just like all other 12 bars, you can just play this in a continuous loop. So, the entire sequence.

All right, so I hope you liked that lesson and you got some benefit out of it. I’m not, by any means, would consider myself a really great slide player, so I think this is a really good way to get into it. There’s things that you can play in standard tuning with slide, but it’s much, much easier to play it in an open tuning. Open G is a good one, open E is also a good one, so that way you can play chords and make melodies and stuff with only having use of your other, like in my case, my first three fingers. If you’re using it on your third finger, then you’ve only got your first two. That’s one of the reasons why I like it here, and the slide is just more comfortable for me on this finger.

So, if you liked this lesson, be sure to give me a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below if there’s something you like to see either myself or one of the other instructors at guitarcontrol.com do in a future lesson. Be sure to subscribe to the channel, so you get updates and all the new lessons that we publish throughout the week. All right, so that’s all I’ve got for you today, so until next time.