Previously I had owned a squareneck version of this guitar, so I knew it was a good instrument. For the price, I don’t think you can find a better sounding resonator. It simply sounds amazing and comes alive to me unlike many of the other guitars in this price range.

I picked up this guitar for $550 at Musicians Friend. I challenge you to find a better deal.

In the video below I give you a short demonstration of what this guitar sounds like using open g tuning. I’m also using fingerpicks in this video but it is not required.

So what do you think of the sound of this guitar?

If you would like to learn more about playing open g tuning, please check out my 4 DVD Course.

Some of these video podcasts’ are not compatible with the ipod or iphone as well. The original video files were lost due to a hard drive failure so there can be no editing of the videos. For these reasons, I have decided to remove them forever. They are gone and will not ever be available.

You can check out all the other video podcasts’ here.

Hope you understand.

Best,

John W. Tuggle

This guitar has not been setup for slide. The action is pretty low and I’m using a set of .010′s for strings.

It is harder to play like this, but not impossible. You really have to keep a light touch, while pressing the slide gently against the strings.

Watch the Video

Tab for this Lesson

To get the tone for this lesson, the amp is a 1966 Fender Vibrolux on 6 with a Weber Mini Mass. For pedals I used a Fulltone OCD and a VL Effects Vintage Fat Boost pedal. Having them both on at the same time gives a real nice, fat overdrive like Warren always uses. The reverb on the amp was set to 4 which also contributes to the tone.

To learn more about playing slide guitar in standard tuning check out my Standard Tuning Slide Course.

You are probably really excited about the new gear you got for Christmas and you’ve been thinking about how this year is going to be different than all the other ones.

This year YOU WILL PLAY LIKE DUANE! Or whomever you are into.

So what happens to most people who start the year off with this attitude?

I would say that the majority of people have really good intentions when the new year arrives, but for some reason things just don’t go as planned, and soon they are back at the computer, researching what tubes are best to put in that new amp. Because you can’t play with stock tubes. Without the boutique tubes, you’re tone will be lame at best, and you won’t be able to brag on the forums about how you got “THE” tubes in your amp.

Well I am having a little fun with these situations, but I can bet that people can relate to this on some level.

So what goes wrong for the majority of people who set out to accomplish their big goal such as, “Play Like Duane Allman?”

I’ll tell you exactly what goes wrong.

They don’t set their Goals properly. I’m not kidding. As Ziz Ziglar says, “Aim for Nothing and you’ll hit it every time.” This is very true and I’ll take it a step further and say that if your target is too big, then you’ll probably hit it, but you won’t hit the bullseye, which is where you need to be to achieve your goal.

So let’s take for instance the Goal of “I want to play like Duane Allman.” Now this is a very lofty goal and at it’s current state is already setting the person up for failure.

I mean you write down that goal, look at it everyday, and it’s just like trying to climb Mt Everest. What you need to do is break this goal down into steps that are attainable.

Here’s Zig Ziglar’s 7 Steps to Goal Setting

• Write down your goals.
• Put a date on them.
• Identify the obstacles.
• Identify the people / groups you need to work with.
• Find out what it is you need to know.
• Develop a plan of action.
• Write it down and write down WIIFM – What’s In It For Me.

Taking a look at these steps gives us some valuable insight into how to turn that goal of “Play Like Duane Allman” into some manageable steps to succeed.

So let’s break down this goal using Zig Ziglar’s steps.

1.  Write Down Your Goals – Ok.  This is simple enough.  I want to Play Like Duane Allman.  But I feel like you need to be more specific when setting a goal.  Do you want to play slide like him?  Standard blues guitar like him?  Or maybe there’s a particular song you want to learn.  Do you want to learn this song note for note, or just understand how to improvise like him.  The more specific you get, the better a chance you have at achieving your goal.

2.  Put a Date On Them – Here you need to be realistic.  If you’ve never played guitar before, then you’re setting yourself up for failure if your goal is to play like Duane Allman within 3 months.  BE REALISTIC!  If you’ve never played slide before, then it’s going to be tough to do this quickly.  Give yourself a reasonable amount of time to attain your goal. If you’ve been playing slide a little, then I think that setting a goal such as. “Improvise over a Shuffle Blues like Duane Allman in 9 months” would be a good goal to set.

3.  Identify the Obstacles – Here you need to define what is prohibiting you from playing like this.  Things such as improvisation techniques, getting the feeling of his playing, how much practice time you will be able to put in,  how consistent you can be with your practicing.  These are just a few things you can think about when setting this goal.

4.  Identify the people / groups you need to work with. – If you don’t already know what it takes to play like Duane, then you’re going to have to either find a teacher and have them guide you, or figure it out for yourself.  It is a lot easier to get assistance, but if you can’t, then you will have to figure out what you need to learn to play like this.  This is a good thing to do no matter if you have outside help or not.  Spend some time listening actively to how the guitar sounds, and how he reacts in certain situations.  It will make you a much better player because of it.

5.  Find out what it is you need to know. – This kinda goes along with the one before it.  In this example you need to know, ( In my opinion) Open E Tuning scales and intervals, muting, raking, phrasing, singer type licks, and how to improvise.  These are a few things you could start working on to start playing like him.

6.  Develop a plan of action. – This is where you get down to business and write out a practice routine that will get you there by the date you set.  For example: 5 days a week you will practice for 1 hour the practice routine you developed. This could be something such as

10 minutes of warm up exercises

10 minutes of vibrato practice

10 minutes of learning where your intervals are located

10 minutes of practicing raking

10 minutes of practicing licks

10 minutes or more of improvising over backing tracks.

You can change the time of each activity if you need to.  After 6 months of focused practice like this, you will see a dramatic change in your playing.

7.  Write it down and write down WIIFM – What’s In It For Me. – I believe this is really important as well.  Write down what the emotional impact of achieving your goal will be.  This may be the ability to play in a band, feeling of accomplishment, the ability to record Duane style slide on your CD’s.  If you’re already a guitar teacher, then this may be the ability to get more students by teaching slide.  That’s what I did.  It also may open up more possibilities for playing with more bands.

Do this step!  It will help.  Once an emotional connection is made with your goal, the probability of you achieving it dramatically goes up.

Well that’s my take on how setting goals properly will actually make them happen for you.  I have actually done these things and continue to do them with all different areas of my life.  I can honestly say that once I started setting goals like this back in 2007, my entire life has changed dramatically for the better.

I urge you to start setting goals immediately not only with your guitar playing, but with all aspects of your life.  I can guarantee you will see a difference.

Happy New Year to you all and I hope your goals become a reality this year.

Make a commitment today to set your goals by leaving a comment below.  You’ll be putting it in writing for everyone to see and that’s the first step to seeing them become a reality.

That will give an idea of what kind of tone you can get from using this combination of guitar and amp. Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions or comments.

Watch the video guitar lesson.

Tab for this guitar lesson

Thanks for checking out the podcast. Remember for detailed lessons with tabs and backing tracks please check out my 3 DVD Dickey Betts Course.

Here are some key things that have been changed.

1. The Fender Guitar Removed – I receive comments all the time about being Gibson Recommended and having a Fender guitar on the website header. This is no longer an issue.

2. Larger site – The completely larger size of the site has been needed for some time, so now you should see a more room for everything that can be read.

3. Larger Text – The text has been changed as well to make it easier to read. As we get older the eyes start to lose something, this should make it easier to read anything on the site.

4. Top Navigation – All navigation has been put at the top with dropdown menus to make it easier to find what you’re looking for.

5. Bigger Videos – All the Premium Lesson video previews are now a lot larger so you can see exactly what you you will be getting.

Here’s a side by side comparison of the changes.

Well those are the main things, but there are a slew of other features that I won’t bore you with. If you have any comments or see any issues please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear your opinion.

Thanks! John W. Tuggle

Here’s the steps to follow in Windows.

1. Download the VLC player. It’s FREE!

2. Put the DVD in your computer. If your DVD starts playing immediately, stop it.

3. Click Start at the bottom left corner.

4. Click My Computer. You should now see the DVD listed in the window.

5. Right Click the DVD and select Play with VLC media player

6. While the DVD is Playing the section you would like to slow down, click Playback at the top and then click slower.

7. You can keep clicking slower to adjust the speed you would like to watch at.

Hopefully this will help you get even more out of the DVD lessons.

So continuing on. About 2001, I decided to start playing slide again. I had quit playing for a couple of years to focus on playing regular guitar. I really wanted to be like SRV, Clapton, and Hendrix, so this is what I focused on. I did play some occasional slide here and there, but not much.

It all started to re-surface when I sat in with a blues rock band. They already had a great guitarist, so I thought I would play some slide to mix it up. I started playing some Warren type licks and everybody started saying, “Keep doing that. It sounds great”.

After this night I thought to myself, “Maybe it’s time to dive deeper into this slide thing.”

Rebirth

So that was it. I was determined to start learning slide completely. I immediately turned to Duane Allman again who had been nearly impossible to learn 10 years ago. And yep, it was still very hard. I was still playing slide in standard tuning at this point and was not willing to use open tunings because I only had one guitar and didn’t want to re-tune after every song when playing live. I also remember pulling out some Derek Trucks albums my drummer had told me about and trying to learn them.

It was very difficult, and I felt like quitting. Using standard tuning, I just couldn’t find the notes he was hitting. I was spending a lot of time trying to figure this out, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. And this raking noise I kept hearing Derek making was very difficult to figure out.

Then I said, “You know, lets just try this open e tuning and see what happens.” So I tuned my Strat to Open E to see what it was like and BOOM! I knew then that this was the key to unlocking Duane Allman and Derek Trucks awesome slide guitar style. The excitement I felt pushed me to start practicing hours everyday for about 3 years to learn this style. It was exciting again!

Practice Makes Perfect

From this point forward, I grabbed every Derek Trucks album and Live album of him with the Allman Brothers and his band. I also started learning every Duane Allman Slide solo he ever recorded that I could find. Keep in mind I didn’t own a computer or have access to internet at all. This was about 2001 or so. There was no YouTube and video didn’t exist yet on the internet. I mainly turned to live albums and CD’s. A few in particular that I wore out was Derek Trucks Live At the Georgia Theatre, Allman Brothers Live in Atlanta (2000) this was a bootleg, and Allmans at Fillmore East of Course.

I immediately started sitting in with bands and using open e tuning. It was very scary at first because I was trying to play all this new stuff and it was hard. I felt very frustrated because for one, I had to learn how to retune between every song to be able to play in this tuning. I only had one guitar and I had no money. There was no way another guitar was coming anytime soon.

So that’s what I did for about 3 years. Gigging and practicing open e tuning with the Strat. Around 2004 or so, I was finally able to save enough money for a Gibson SG. I had been dreaming of this guitar for years, and it looked like I was finally going to be able to get one.

Gibson SG

I was teaching guitar lessons at Musicians Warehouse in Athens Ga at the time, and they were a Gibson Dealer back then. The owner said I could get a discount on one if I ordered directly from them. So that is what I did. When that guitar arrived at the store, it was an amazing day to finally have a guitar I could just keep in Open E Tuning. Now at all my gigs I could have a second guitar for this tuning which made it so much easier.

I continued to practice and spent a lot of time transcribing Derek Trucks and Duane Allman Solos. This was very difficult and time consuming but I felt my ear becoming very quick to figure out this material.

At the time I was working at a gas station and during the slow periods I would practice my exercises, licks, muting and raking all day long. Then I would go out and play gigs using the material I was practicing about 2-3 times per week. Doing this really helped me to develop a slide guitar style over time. It also helped me to become confident in the material I was playing. Navigating around different keys in many styles of music can become very difficult in your brain. Repetition is the key. After I had been doing this for a few years it started to become second nature.

DVDs

In 2007 I decided to put what I had learned about Open E Tuning into a DVD, called Slide Guitar Method 1: Open E Tuning. I was working a part time CD packing job during this time along with playing gigs and teaching 40 student’s a week. It was a very busy time to say the least. To make this a reality, I quit my part-time job to focus on recording this DVD. I spent all my money on what is now Learning Guitar Now to start the website to promote it.

It was definitely a big gamble, because by quitting my part-time job, I lost half my income which was going to make it very difficult to pay all my bills if this DVD didn’t pan out. Fortunately, I was able to sell a few DVDs and keep this dream alive. Thank the Lord! This was the first DVD I had ever made, and I felt like this information could save people years of time that I had spent learning this stuff. I can tell you that it is very frustrating listening to Derek Trucks and Duane Allman and try to get somewhere near to what they are doing.

By making all these lessons, I have learned even more about what it takes, and the exact moves I have learned to make playing slide guitar possible. Hopefully I’ve conveyed this information in the lessons I have made. To anyone who has purchased my lessons, thank you so much for taking a chance on my lessons to help get you where you want to go with slide guitar. Without you, none of this would have been possible.

Well that’s how my slide guitar story unfolded. If you’re interested in learning what I spent years deciphering, you can check out my Open E Tuning Slide Course.

Here’s an example of me playing some slide guitar over this track.

To learn more about playing open e tuning slide guitar, check out my Open E Tuning Slide Guitar Course.