Playing single note lines on the slide is inherently difficult. The reason is obvious…there’s a hunk of metal on your finger!
Metal, glass, ceramic, whatever your choice of slide there’s no doubt your range of motion is severely limited while wearing a slide.
In this lesson, we’re going to lean into the limitation a bit.
Playing Single Note Slide Guitar Lines
We’ll focus on playing a single note melody line on the second string. In other words, one note in the melody at a time.
The goal is to play the piece only fretting the slide over the second string. As mentioned in the video, beginners should aim to play this with strings three through six completely untouched by the slide.
If you’re a little more nimble with the slide, try playing without touching the first string with the slide. This way, you’ll only place the slide on the second string. This requires some tricky angles that, while difficult, can be done.
Whichever level you attempt, we’re aiming for accuracy here.
A slide guitar player needs the ability to target a single note.
Super Charge Your Practice Time
When possible, I like to supercharge my practice time by working on exercises that pull double or triple duty. This lesson does just that.
We’ll certainly focus on this single note business to improve our slide fretting accuracy. But, you’ll also reinforce the core slide guitar skills of dampening, applying the correct amount of pressure and fretting the note in the proper place.
Not to mention, this example lick calls for alternating bass: one of the pillars of country blues picking.
Enjoying These Slide Guitar Lessons?
Follow along with the other lessons in this slide guitar series:
How Not to Suck at Slide Guitar
The Fun Way to Practice Slide Guitar Scales