If you’re learning slide in standard tuning, many people will simple use the same pentatonic boxes to play slide licks.

While using these box patterns will give you a few ideas, you need to re-think these patterns to have any real long term success when playing slide guitar in standard tuning.

Bad Idea

Well, I’m here to tell you that using box patterns is probably one of the worst things you can do when you start learning slide guitar. Simply put, these box patterns are not what you use to successfully learn and play slide guitar.

Think about it. When playing slide guitar, you move the slide up and down the fretboard, not across. All those fast patterns you learn when playing standard blues guitar are useless when playing slide. You must starting thinking differently!

Playing more melodically, with less notes, will take you a long way when playing slide.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO PLAY FAST TO SOUND GOOD.

Just because you hear Derek Trucks playing all these really difficult licks, doesn’t mean that you have to start out trying to play like that. Melody and space will take you very far when playing slide.

If you only take one thing away from this post, remember that slide guitar playing moves up and down the fretboard, not vertically across the fretboard like many people play standard blues guitar. If you keep this in mind, you will be more likely to become successful when learning how to play slide.

For more information on learning how to play slide guitar check out my Slide Guitar Courses.

Watch the Video.

There’s a lot of people that seem to like them and some who think they are terrible. :/ For the most part, people seem to really enjoy them and find playing over them a very beneficial way to help their playing. In fact, just 2 of the backing tracks I have uploaded to YouTube have been viewed 1 million times! That’s pretty amazing to me!

For me to create backing tracks, I decided that I wanted to be able to put them together myself anytime I without having to record an entire band. This has been pretty difficult to learn how to do but has saved me a lot of money and time. The hardest thing to do is to about how dynamics can be re-created, which a lot of backing tracks I have heard don’t really have. Learning how to adjust to dynamics will help you learn how to play better lead guitar in my opinion.

I’ve been recording music in my home studio for about 7 years now. Let me tell you that it is a very difficult thing to learn how to do really well. There is so much involved from room acoustics, software, mics, eq, compression, and a number of other things that can be quite complicated. The biggest thing to learn though is arrangement, and how to sit instruments properly so the mix sounds even. While I am no professional mixer, I try to keep learning as much as possible to continually improve my skills.

Lately I’ve been learning a lot from Pensado’s Place which is packed with awesome information from top mixers in the industry. Check it out here.

Currently, I’m getting back into learning more about mixing and recording so I can get a really professional sound. I have spent a considerable amount of time working on my chops and mixing space lately so that I can produce better sounding tracks. In the future, I do have plans to start recording my own solo album and have many songs in the works that I think are good. The problem is that it just takes so much time, and when I’m constantly working on new lessons as well, I don’t have the motivation to work on recording my own songs. I will find the time though soon.

So in this post I want to show you a little bit about how I go about recording and mixing the backing tracks I produce.

The first step for me is to find a groove that I want to use and then nailing the tempo and drum beat that will simulate the track I am trying to copy. In the backing track I have currently been working on, I turned to one of Freddie King’s funkier type tunes.

After I decided what the key and style would be, I look for drum pieces I could use to put together a cohesive drum track. In case you’re wondering, I use tracks from Beta Monkey that are real recorded drum tracks that you can cut and paste together to create a full drum composition. They are not free however, but for me they are worth it.

After the Drum track has been prepared, synced to a grid, and maybe edited using Elastic Audio in Pro Tools, I then record a bass guitar track to fit with the kick drum of the drum track. Then it’s just a matter of recording guitar parts, keyboards, and whatever else I might need to make the track sound good. Mixing the tracks with EQ, compression, and effects round out the end to make a nice cohesive track to play along to.

Here’s the gear I use to record and mix the backing tracks.

Pro Tools 8
Digi 002r
Api A2d
Blue Sky Mediadesk speakers
Shure SM 57
AEA R 84 Ribbon
M Audio Axiom 49 midi controller
URS CSP Plugins
Waves API Plug Ins
Massey Plug Ins
TL Space
Ampeg SVX

Here’s a few videos to show you the process of how I put the backing tracks together.

You can check out the finished version of the track here. Funky Blues Backing Track in C#

You can download this track for a limited time. Click Here to Download

If you’re interested in seeing how I created this track. Visit this blog post.

Here’s a video of my playing over this track.

If you would like to learn more about playing open e tuning slide guitar, check out my 6 DVD Slide Course in Open E Tuning.

Unfortunately, I had to sell it to get money to invest in this website. Fast forward a few years, and I have the chance to start learning again, an instrument that can be very difficult to play.

Jerry Douglas even says it’s an instrument that can immediately drive people away, second only to the violin. Meaning, this thing can sound bad to the ear if you don’t play it properly.

Well, I like challenges, so I decided I would pick one up and play it at Eddie’s Attic with my girlfriend at their Monday night open mic in about a week. It’s a little nerve racking but, hey, it’s supposed to be fun, and I’ll learn a lot by going out and performing in front of people with the Dobro.

So as I go about practicing this very new instrument, I’m reminded of what it is like to be in the shoes of someone who really wants to learn how to play guitar. I’m analyzing myself as I go through the same process many of you have with my lessons. Let’s just start at what it’s been like for me in the beginning. I believe many of you will be able to relate to my experience, and that alone will help your mindset to know that pretty much everyone goes through the same process when learning how to play guitar.

The first thing I did when I got it was immediately start playing some things I already knew. I quickly realized that this was a little bit different when playing squareneck dobro. I didn’t sound quite as polished, as my girlfriend put it! That was ok. I could learn, and I could find some lessons. I had questions like, how should I be holding the tone bar, how should I be sitting, what should my left hand and right hand be doing to properly play this different style of playing slide?

I had so many questions that needed answers. As many of you probably do, I turned to YouTube and found a few helpful things. As I felt these videos helped, I went and purchased a few lessons. Specifically these lessons were from TrueFire Dobro Handbook, and Lessons with Troy. These are some great lessons and I’ve already picked up some teaching tips that I want to include in my lessons in the future.

So now I had some lessons and was going about putting them into practice, which, by the way, I’ve got to do today. I noticed that I immediately learned some really cool things, and my playing really started to get better. This was exciting!

As this process of learning was unfolding, I started noticing a few things that were making the biggest difference in how much I did improve, and can improve over time.

These 4 Practice Tips will get you wherever you want to go with your playing:

1. Patience – You must have this quality or you will get nowhere fast. Most people, including me, want to take the lessons, practice a few times, and then BAM! You’re playing amazing in a couple of days. Unfortunately, things don’t work that way. Gradually over time you will get better, and being patient about your progress will help keep you in the right state of mind to continue to learn new things.

2. Persistence – This is a hard one as well. When learning something new, you must fight through that period that WILL COME when the “new” wears off of that amp or guitar and it becomes just another piece of equipment that needs to be practiced on. You know what I mean. Sometimes buying new gear is very fun and rewarding as you open the box and use the item for the first time. It’s like being a kid at Christmas. Sadly, when the “new” wears off, we realize that the guitar won’t make us any better, and daily practice will be needed to see what the guitar can really do. This happens to me as well.

3. Repetition – If there’s one thing that will get you there faster, it’s repetition. I’ve been trying to learn some cool licks, and I tell you, I’ve probably played some of these licks a hundred times! I see that this can be very difficult and frustrating, but keep repeating the lick over and over till you can play that lick without even thinking about it. When you get on stage to play it, I will guarantee you that the first few times you try to perform it, a sense of nervousness will come over you, and if your natural instinct doesn’t take over, you won’t be able to execute it. If you have to practice the lick 1,000 times, then do it. You won’t regret it.

4. Recording – I know I say this over and over, but it’s the truth. This is what happened yesterday. I have been practicing a good bit for about a week and feel pretty good about the stuff I have learned. I figure, let’s try to record to a track. Things that I thought I had down, now obviously needed A LOT of practice. I couldn’t believe it. Just playing by myself, I thought that I sounded pretty good.

However, when I hit that record button and listened back, I felt like quitting, like many of you may feel at times. I then realized that listening to this bad playing was a good thing. Why? Because now I knew exactly what I needed to practice! Bingo!!! If you don’t know what you need to practice, how are you ever going to get better?

If you’re not recording yourself, you will find that the time it will take you to learn will increase significantly because you won’t know exactly what you need to practice. START RECORDING NOW! IT WILL SAVE YOU TIME! If you need to record yourself, you can always just put your phone down and use it to record your playing.

Well, that’s how my experience has been so far. I hope you can benefit by knowing that all types of players go through the same process when learning how to play guitar.

Watch a video of me playing some licks on the Dobro I’ve been practicing.

I will say this though. If you are using a lot of gain or distortion, then I can tell you that the amount you use will directly impact the size of your guitar tone.

If you think you’re going to get a real fat blues guitar sound by using a lot of gain, then you are completely wrong. The number one thing you should look at when trying to figure out your tone is how much distortion you are using.

When you are trying to get a nice distorted blues sound, start by creating a great clean sound first and then work from there. When using distortion, your sound becomes compressed which means the dynamic range is smaller which in turn will lead to a thinner sounding tone.

I was recording some BB King Style leads for a client today and ran into this tone problem which is why I’m writing about it right now. I recorded a few takes of lead guiar and sent them over to the client. They wrote back saying that they loved the licks, but they would like a little more clean sounding blues guitar tone. So I went to work getting a sound that would make them happy and get me paid as well!

The first thing I did was remove the attenuator. Now I’m not saying this attenuator is bad, but for this tone, I didn’t really need it. It is a wonderful piece of equipment and I highly recommend it.

Once the attenuator was out of the equation, then I started going about cleaning up the amp sound to please this client.

The initial settings were as follows.

Amp 5
Weber on 7
Treble on 8
Bass on 3
Reverb on 3.5
Guitar on 6
AEA Ribbon Mic about 16″ back on axis with the right speaker.

Listen to the initial sound below.

After receiving their email I decided that the Weber should go, and to get a clean sound I would need to turn the amp down to about 3. Since I was turning the amp down, I needed to compensate by adding a little more bass and for some more bite, I cranked the treble up.

I also moved the AEA R84 mic closer to the amp to about 12″ back to give it a little more full sound due to the proximity effect of this mic.

Here were the final settings.

Amp 3
Treble on 10
Bass on 4.5
Reverb on 2
Guitar on 4
AEA Ribbon Mic about 12″ back on axis with the right speaker.

Listen to the final sound below.

This final approach created a tone to me that is very reminiscent of old Blues Records and I love it. This was my first time using the AEA R84 Ribbon mic and it simply kills the 57 for this application.

So what is my point? Well it is essential to look at how much gain you are actually using when trying to get your blues tones. Sometimes one of the easiest things to try is simply turning down the amount of gain you are using. I can guarantee you that your notes and the overall power of your sound will improve.

The only caveat – playing with a lot of gain often hides mistakes and sloppiness, so be prepared to hear the truth! If that’s the case, then I can help you out with some blues guitar lessons to help you improve your technique. Check out out my courses here.

Which tone do you like better?

Watch the Lesson

To learn more about this DVD Course please visit this webpage. Eric Clapton Guitar Lessons

Watch the Lesson

To learn more about this DVD Course please visit this webpage. Eric Clapton Guitar Lessons

Watch the Lesson

To learn more about this DVD Course please visit this webpage. Eric Clapton Guitar Lessons

First, I just want to give a big Thank You to everyone who has watched a lesson, left a comment, made a purchase, or in any way, shape, or form has interacted with this website. YOU are the reason this website is possible.

Back in 2007 I made a decision to quit my part time job of packing CD’s into mailers and dive full time into the online guitar lesson arena. At that time, I was still teaching around 40 students a week, so I had some sort of income after leaving the part time job, but not enough to cover everything I needed to pay for since I was in so much debt.

I was also playing in a wedding band which would also help to pay for my living expenses in addition to the private lessons. Things were ok, but at the age of 33, I was thinking that someday it would be nice to buy a house, get out of debt, and get my income above the poverty level.

I felt like the way for me to achieve this was to start this website called Learning Guitar Now. I was determined to make a go at it, so I put my faith in God and started getting busy figuring out how to make this huge dream a reality.

Through the years there have been many ups and downs, successes and failures, but most of all, a time of learning and growing in regards to my business and personal life. When I started putting together the vision for this website, I turned to guidance from the writings of Zig Ziglar, Dave Ramsey, and the Bible.

I felt that if I put the principles from these 3 books into practice regarding the way I do business and the way I treated my customers, no matter what happened I would always feel good about the way my business was conducted.

The continued success has been like a slow uphill battle that just continues to move on. My girlfriend Tova calls me a locomotive. I guess I feel like that’s how the website has operated. At a slow chug that never stops until it reaches it’s destination. I’m always reminded of the Dave Ramsey quote when I think of this. He says, “Every time I read the Tortoise and the Hare, the Tortoise wins!” I believe it’s good to grow slowly, because the foundation you build in the beginning is the key to you surviving those storms when they come. And man, they sure do come sometimes.

It’s always nice to dream of instant, big successes, but it seems like that kind of success can really be damaging if the right foundation is not built.

I know I’m going on here about things other than guitar lessons on this post, but I feel it’s important to share some of the feelings that have come up in me after doing this for a living for some time now. I feel very fortunate to have interacted with all the great people who have emailed me and I have been able to help them in some way or another.

In the times when I felt like quitting, and it seemed like there was so much negativity going on, somehow an email would always arrive in my inbox from someone telling me about how my lessons has had such a positive effect on their playing. These emails have continued to be a source for me to keep chugging along as Tova would say.

I appreciate everyone of you and feel honored that you would take a chance on my guitar lessons. For this I can’t thank you enough.

John W. Tuggle