Slide Guitar 101: Scales for Playing Melodies In Open D

Hey gang, it's Scott here, and this is the third video in our Slide Guitar 101 free lesson series on my blog and on my YouTube channel. And I want to thank everybody for tuning in. I've been checking the analytics, so I know that people are watching. A lot of people are watching the entire videos. I'm really pleased to hear that. I am not getting a lot of comments, not getting a lot of likes. I am getting some shares. I deeply appreciate the folks that are watching. And of course, you do with these lessons whatever you want, they're free. But if you are so inclined and want to go down there and click the thumbs up button or leave me a comment, obviously I'm interested in getting better at presenting these lessons, and I'll know that I'm on the right track if I see the likes and, and I see some comments. So if you don't mind taking a second to do that, I would really appreciate that. So, so far what we've covered is the the tuning. Well, we talked in the first lesson in the series about guitars and gear. In the second lesson, we put our guitars into open D tuning, and we talked about the chord shapes for the 1, 4, and 5 chord— the G— I'm sorry, the D, the G, and the A. And we talked about open and closed shapes that can be used to play those chords. We actually got started playing a 12-bar blues in the key of D using those shapes. So check out that— those, those previous videos. In this video, we're going to talk about playing melodies with the slide, a little bit about slide technique, learning some scales that are, that are used to play melodies in open D. And then this is leading to the next lesson where we'll actually tackle our first tune, "When the Saints Go Marching In," classic early jazz song that has definitely found its way into the repertoire of blues players and bluegrass players, country players. It's a definitive American song. It's a must-learn for everybody, and we're going to really have a lot of fun playing that song. So let's dive into things here. We're going to be playing in the key of D. We should know our D major scale, and we should be able to play that with our slide. So what we're going to do is talk about slide— putting the slide on our finger. I'm going to recommend the 4th finger. That's what I use. It gives me the ability to make those chord shapes that I talked about in the last video. I should mention many, many, many of my heroes of slide guitar played with the slide on their third finger. Bonnie Raitt, Lowell George, I think my friend Del Rey even plays it with her slide on the third finger, and they are all great players whose style I admire. Just for me, this is, this is what works. You should experiment and find out what works for you, but we're going to be demonstrating all these techniques and scales with the slide on our 4th finger. The other thing is an important technique, I think, is the ability to be precise with the notes that we're hitting and intending to hit, and to not have any noise or clashing ringing along with the note that we intend. And that happens when— if I fret with the, the slide directly on the 7th fret, I'm getting an A note, and that A note is is created from the slide to the saddle. But in addition to this note, I'm getting a ghost note behind it if I don't mute. And it's possible that we want to cultivate that sound from time to time, you know, dirty up the sound a little bit, create a little dissonance, a little excitement. Certainly a lot of players were not very precise players. Bucky White comes to mind as somebody that has just a beautiful kind of down-home looseness to his playing that's really enviable and fun to listen to. But at the same time, a lot of players like people like Tampa Red and Blind Willie Johnson, players that had very, very precise technique and were able to play in a way that was really popular and engaging as well. So it's good to be able to do both. I find that starting with the the more difficult precise technique, it's easier to loosen that up than it is to start with a really loose kind of sloppy technique and then try to get it tighter. So I'm gonna recommend that you mute behind the fret. I use the meat of my first finger. I know some people that use basically all the fingers of their hand. It's kind of up to you to experiment with. I'm just telling you what I do. And not that that's the best or the best for you, it's just what I'm doing, just so you know. The other thing, again, I mentioned putting the slide directly on. I'm going to be using a little bit of vibrato in these demonstrations. I'll also be using a little bit of slide. My vibrato— vibrato is like a whole subject unto itself. I think players really kind of define by their vibrato. You can identify a player by the sound of his vibrato. Some of my favorite players have a beautiful kind of loose vibrato that I have never really successfully achieved. Mine tends to be kind of tight. You need to experiment and find the vibrato that works for you. But it's out there. The more ways that you can apply vibrato, you know, just the more tools in your toolbox. Again, we'll be landing, you know, as precisely as we can on the fret and then sliding to the fret. We don't want to slide below the fret. Being flat, not good. By the same token, we don't want to overshoot the fret because being sharp is like even worse than being flat. To most of our ears, it sounds really awful. Alright, so we're going to play the D major scale now. Obviously, if we're in open D, most of the tunes that we're going to be playing are in D major. Most tunes in D major are derived from the D major scale. Major scale is the foundation of our musical system. We're going to start there. So the D major scale is made up of a series of whole steps and half steps. Whole steps are 2 frets, half steps are 1 fret. The D major sound is one we all know: do re mi fa so la ti do. And that is achieved by playing the open D, then we're going to be at the 2nd fret, 4th fret, 5th fret, 7th fret, 9th fret, 11th fret, 12th fret. Now let's do that with the slide, and I'm also going to start applying a bass line, just alternating my thumb from the 6th to the 4th string, trying to be really steady. And I'll do 4 beats per note.

Good to descend.

2 beats per note. You could even do one beat and up. So now we got our thought for solo blues guitar playing. This is a really useful tool, obviously, and we'll be doing that when we get to "When the Saints Go Marching In." So play your major scale, experiment with getting to the note with a little bit of a slide. Generally, when I'm descending, I don't do a whole lot of sliding back into a note. It's a cool thing to do every once in a while, but usually when I'm descending, I'm— for the most part. In addition to that, it's good to know your major and your minor pentatonic scales and the blues scales that are derived from, from them. For instance, if we're just jamming the blues, we're going to probably go to our minor pentatonic, which is open, third fret— I'm sorry, yeah, that's right— open, third fret, fifth fret, sixth fret, tenth fret, twelfth fret. If I want to turn that into the blues scale, I'm going to put in the flatted fifth at the sixth fret.

That's right.

Major pentatonic scale would be the open, 2nd, 4th, 7th, 9th, 12th. The blue note is the minor 3rd on the 3rd fret. Again, practice trying to land right on the note. Try sliding. Sorry. So those are just some exercises. I would say that, you know, at this point you should already, after watching this video, go try to figure out When the Saints Go Marching In melody all by, all on your own. Just, it starts with this note, the open D. So just, you know, start there, see if you can't pick out the melody by ear with your slide and start getting some practice, or just noodle around with one of those scales with a, with a backing track in D, D major, or a D blues, and experiment with using those scales to play over and improvise over those changes. So obviously, you know, we've got now all the tools that we need to get into our first tune next week. Definitely appreciate any comments or shares or likes you want to provide. If you are interested in pursuing any of the topics covered in the free lessons deeper Go to ScottPerryMusician.com and check out the, the lesson format options. I give face-to-face lessons, Skype lessons, video exchange lessons. Soon we'll have some subscription services available, but I'm always eager to help, to help people with their guitar journey. And it doesn't matter what level you're at, you're— there's always somewhere else to go. But I've been teaching for a long time, really enjoy teaching, and And would love to connect with anybody that, that is interested in pursuing lessons with me. And I offer a free consultation. You can arrange to have a phone or video chat consultation and, you know, just get an idea. I'll get an idea of what your goals are. I'll demonstrate where I would be able to take you. And I always enjoy meeting new people and assisting on their their guitar progression. So check that out, and we'll see you next week. Take care.