How to Hold a Guitar Slide

A "slide" being used on a guitar (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There are number of choices for you to chose your slide and set-up for your guitar. Also, there is no such standard rule that you need to confirm while adjusting the chords on your guitar slide. Most of the people generally prefer heavier strings as well as higher action.

Hold your guitar slide in such a way that fits your fingers the best. This will help you in playing your guitar chords and lyrics in a very convenient manner. Make sure that the slide should fit your finger snugly enough to keep it from falling on your toe when you relax your hand at your side with the fingers placed straight down. This will enable you in keeping your hand muscles from having to hold the slide in place on your finger, freeing them to play the country guitar chords, which after all is the your ultimate goal. 

After that choose the finger which is most suitable and comfortable for playing your tunes. To maintain the maximum flexibility and usefulness, it is generally suggested to learn to play with your slide with the help of your little finger.  With such a type of placement the three three adjacent fingers are left free to play figures behind the slide and for chords leaving the slide out of the way.

You will also find guitarists who play around the slide by wearing on his ring finger, and developing his or her own style around that. Some people wear their slide like a Mateus wine bottle neck on their ‘redneck salute’ finger, which really does limit what they can do with their fingers.

While chords are primarily used for rhythm guitar, basic chord knowledge can be important for lead playing as well. Knowing how chords are constructed can help when learning the lead parts of many songs since there is always a relationship between a chord and the lead part.

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How to Read Guitar Tabs

It is quite easy to learn how to play guitar tabs, but there is one problem with this learning. There is no standard format in which these tabs can be written unlike the standard music notation. But, there is no big difference. Also, there  might be no indication about the rhythm denoted by that specific guitar tab. Hence, all you need to understand and get familiar is with the different kinds of guitar tabs so that you can play your tunes correctly.  

Let us now start of with the basics of the guitar tab. First of all let us learn how to read the notes.

According to the basics the tab consists of six lines and each line represents a string. The lines are laid out as though you had the guitar lying down face up on your lap and were looking down at it, presuming you are a right handed player. This means that look at your guitar tab the same way you look at your guitar.

The vertical lines represent each bar and each bar is one measure. Because each line represents a guitar string, writing tabs is as simple as writing the fret number on each string. The horizontal axis equals time so you play each note on the fretboard from left to right.

The numbers on the fretboard show the exact note order in which you would play the above tab. Because the horizontal axis equals time, guitar chords will have their notes shown in the same vertical line.

It is also very essential to have some knowledge about the various types of guitar tabs. (see http://www.musicguitarchords.com) In general there are three main types of tabs namely ASCII guitar tab, plain tab and tab with notation. Of all these tabs, ASCII tab is very commonly used by many guitarists. The plain type of guitar tab or the basic tab comes with timing information there is rhythm information inscribed on it. And the ultimate kind of guitar tab is the tab with notation.