Slide Guitar 101: Playing "When the Saints Go Marching In" In Open D

Hey gang, Scott here with the final video in our Slide Guitar 101, getting started in open D tuning. We've talked about guitars and gear, how to set up the guitar, the kind of slides available, where to put it on, you know, which finger to put it on, that sort of thing. We've discussed the harmonies of a 1-4-5 progression, so we've got some open position and barred chords for the 1, 4, and 5, the D, G, and A. And we've talked about how to find the major scale on the first string with the slide, the D major scale, and how to find the major and minor and the derived blues scales with the slide as well, so that we have those all available to us as we interpret and improvise over a particular tune. So the tune that we're going to start with is "When the Saints Go Marching In." It's a great early, early jazz tune from New Orleans, obviously, and it's a tune that has, you know, crossed into every imaginable American genre. You hear versions of this being played by old-time bands, jazz bands, blues bands, even, you know, rock bands and country bands. So great American tune, kind of an essential tune, I think, even though I have never actually played this one before. And that's kind of the point. I wanted to illustrate how, you know, how I, just like you, would come at a tune for the first time and start to put it together as a slide guitar piece. So I haven't done a any preparation for this. I'm just gonna kinda wing it. It's going to be therefore imperfect, so, but that's— it's supposed to be illustrative, not a showcase piece at this point. Just trying to give you the idea of how to approach arranging a tune for slide guitar. So the first thing would be obviously just get the harmony right. Make sure that you can play the chords that the melody is going to be played over. I like to start that with just strumming. I'll strum on 1 and 3 and just find the harmony that goes against, you know, that's underneath the melody line. So "Tune" is interesting in that it starts on the second beat, so it's kind of immediately a little bit syncopated in a very basic way, and in that way, you know, also a really nice way.

So it starts, if I were to like just go 1, 3, oh when the saints, that's all the I chord, go marching in, oh when the saints Go marching in.

That's the V chord.

How I want to be in that number.

That's the IV. When the saints, the I.

Go marching, V, I.

All right, so I'm just going to use this open position fretted V chord, the A, and I'm going to use this barred position 4 chord, the G, because the melody note that I'm looking for is in those two versions of the chord. So, um, so there's— now I've got the harmony. Now maybe the next step would be to start putting in the alternating bass. That's going to be the real foundation of what I play the melody against when I put the slide to the guitar. So for my 1 chord, I'll be going 1— I'm sorry, 6-4 6 on the 1 and 3, 4 on the 2 and 4. When I'm on this 5 chord, I'm going to be hitting the 5 and the 4, and then when I'm on the barred 4 chord, I'll be hitting the 6 and the 4 as well. So if I were to just sing the melody against an alternating bass line, it would sound like this: Oh, when the saints Go marching in.

Oh, when the saints go marching in.

There's my V chord.

Oh, how I want—

back to the I—

to be in that number.

That's the IV.

When the saints go marching in.

So now I've got my alternating bass. That's the foundation. You want to be able to do that really well before you even start thinking about learning the melody. And so I think it's great to sing, you know, sing over the alternating bass or the chords, but you can hum or whistle if you're not comfortable singing. Next step is to find that melody. I usually find it with my first finger first. That way I really hear the precise notes that I'm supposed to be getting, and then I'll put the slide to it after I kind of have mapped out where the melody is on the fretboard. Another great thing about this particular tune is that the opening melody line repeats 3 times at the beginning of the song. So it starts with open 4, 5, 7. It does that again. Open 4, 5, 7, and it does it one more time. Open 4, 5, 7, 4, open 4, 2, 4, 4, 2, open 4, 7, 5, open 4, 5, 7, 4, open 2, open. I put the harmony in there too, so Again, if I were to do it again, uh, with the chords—

sorry.

So now it's starting to sound like the tune. So now I'm going to find those notes with my slide. Again, I haven't done a lot of preparation on this, so it's not going to be perfect, but the first thing I, I try to do is get that same exact melody with, you know, landing right above the fret with my slide. And concentrating on getting the precise notes, and then I'll manipulate them and interpret them by slatting to or back to, applying vibrato, all that sort of thing. So if I were to do that, it would sound like this. Now when I went to the 5 chord, I didn't hit that note with my slide obviously because it would be really hard to get my slide into and and do the chord at the same time. But I did, you know, play it with the slide here because it's just barred with the slide. So now I've kind of fleshed out the harmony, the alternating bass, and I've got an idea of where the melody is. I would obviously spend a lot of time just playing the melody straight and really, really getting it down before I were to start interpreting it by deciding to slide to or back to a note. Applying vibrato, or maybe adding other scale tones to kind of embellish the melody. And I would really start there with your, with your embellish— your improvisation is start with the straight melody, then try to just dress it up a little bit, or interpret it I guess would be a good word, with deciding how to slide into or back to the notes. You know, if you're going to put some vibrato on a note, maybe the occasional chord tone, or I'm sorry, scale tone. And then, you know, then you can start to use those scales that we talked about in the previous video to just kind of improvise freely over the changes, you know, getting further and further from the melody if you want to. So I'm going to close this video just by kind of doing my best to take a crack at this concept of, you know, straight melody melody with some ornamentation, full-blown improvisation, and then I'll try to get back to the straight melody to close. So I hope that you enjoy, enjoy this series of lessons. I'll be back next week with another new lesson, free lesson series. Obviously, if you want to investigate this style further, please go to ScottPerryMusician.com and check out the teacher link and look at the various format teaching formats that I have available. Obviously, if you live near Floyd, Virginia, you can see me for face-to-face lessons, but I am more and more teaching online, sometimes through Skype. More often, it appears that people really enjoy the video exchange. It's more cost-effective, and it's just a great way to, you know, you then have an archive of the lessons that we're doing. So that's a great format as well. But always glad to also see that people are commenting and liking and sharing these lessons. Lets me know that they're being seen and viewed and appreciated. And, you know, I want to get better and better at doing this, so definitely leave your comments below. Alright, so we'll close with just me taking a crack at "When the Saints Go Marching In." Alright, I hope you enjoyed that. We'll see you next week.