GLIDE PATHS

Learn five useful slide-playing techniques to help you become a bottleneck virtuoso with these Derek Trucks-inspired licks.

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DEREK TRUCKS IS celebrated for his soulful, innovative slide guitar playing, which is characterized by his unique touch, highly refined tone and adventurous note choices. The guitarist plugs straight into a cranked Fender-style tube amp for natural, organic-sounding gain, but an overdrive pedal can provide similar tones at more reasonable volume levels. Most often, he uses the bridge pickup on his Gibson SG, softening the sound slightly by rolling back its tone control a little. Derek is also a fingerstyle player, which lightens the attack of his tone further. In this lesson, we'll look at some of the elements of his signature slide playing approaches. Like many slide players, Derek prefers open tunings (usually open E: low to high, E, B, E, G#, B, E), but the examples in this lesson are presented in standard tuning, for your convenience.