The most useful thing about open tunings can be a huge trap.
Tune to Open G and strum across the strings. You get a big G Major chord.
It sounds great and not having to fret anything to play a chord is super useful to a slide player.
Now you can easily play chords with the slide by playing across all or some of the strings at any fret.
Nice.
But here’s the rub…
That one-fret-chord way of thinking really limited me in the early days of my slide playing.
It was so useful that I didn’t look for other (more interesting) chord shapes.
Plus, my licks were glued to that single fret.
That’s a great way to get started with slide but – and I hate to admit this – I didn’t go beyond it for years. I got a little bored with my slide solos.
The fix?
For me, it was to learn more chords!
Learning a couple of simple shapes got me moving around the fretboard. Then, I began playing licks near these shapes that followed the chord changes.
This really leveled up my solos and helped me break through my rut. I hope it will help you too.
So, in today’s Tuesday Blues lesson, I’ll take you through a 12 bar blues jam in Open G that mixes in a couple of different chord shapes.
Then, we’ll play a lead that follows the chord changes in a musical way.
Watch the video above and level up your slide skills.