Learn Slide Guitar

How you ever wanted to learn how to play slide guitar? I was searching YouTube a couple of months ago and came across some educational slide guitar videos by John Tuggle, who is a guitar teacher in Athens, GA and owner of Learning Guitar Now. John sells several blues guitar instructional videos on the site, including four that are focused on helping you learn how to play slide guitar. Specifically, John focuses on slide guitar topics in the style of Duane Allman, Warren Haynes, and Derek Trucks.

I was impressed with the YouTube videos, so I checked out John’s first video in the slide guitar series: Open E Tuning. The video features 80 minutes of instructional material, plus a PDF file containing tablature of the lessons and backing tracks that you can use to play over.

After watching the video, I like John’s instructional style. It’s clear he’s an experienced teacher. He starts off teaching the basics, including the basics of the Open E tuning. He goes over right and left hand technique in quite a bit of detail. If you’ve ever played slide guitar before, you know that it’s important to get the basic technique down right or you’ll never sound good. I like the fact that John doesn’t rush through the technique part of the video. In fact, he stresses multiple times how important it is to get the technique down before moving on.

After teaching right- and left-hand technique, John discusses the 12-bar blues progression and the major chords involved. Next, John introduces some licks from the major chords and teaches you how to play them. After you get familiar with the major chords, John goes over the minor pentatonic scale and how it can be used with slide guitar. Along the way, he provides examples and gives some helpful tips for how to use the scales in your playing. The scales part of the video is followed by some more technique exercises to help you get familiar with playing the scales.

Once you’ve got the scales down, John shows you 10 licks based on the scales you learned previously in the video. As with all the exercises, tablature is provided for each lick, which is very helpful.

Finally, John ties the lessons together in a sample slide solo. Again, tablature is provided for the solo, which should keep you busy for a little while. I like the fact that John has provided a sample solo to help you get started. Additionally, as I mentioned above, backing tracks are provided so you have some music to play over, which is a nice addition.

Learning Guitar Now’s Open E Tuning slide guitar video is only $19.99, which is a great value considering the quality of the content you get. Nowadays, guitar lessons cost $20-25 per half hour, so you get almost three times the instruction for less than the price of one lesson. Plus, you can rewind and replay parts to help you master it. I think John’s videos are a great value and would recommend them if you’re looking to get started playing slide guitar. Check out a sample video: